Calder is an enthusiast, but not in an annoying way; he just absolutely loves going to different places. Now 70, he travels like a student, but a selective one: bikes, trains, cheap flights, one-star hotels. He doesn’t like driving but he’s very keen on hitchhiking, which he’s been doing since he was a teenager. “Hitchhiking is always an adventure,” he says. “Great or small.”
He never stops. So far this year he’s been to Brazil, Uruguay, Buenos Aires, Patagonia, Istanbul, Chengdu, Australia, Bali, Java, Kosovo, Albania, Guernsey, Herm, Northumberland, Durham, Bath and Newcastle. The day after our meeting, he’s going to France, to Deauville, to see an exhibition. Thirty-five pounds on easyJet, thank you.
Is this work or holiday? It’s a pointless question because, for Calder, there’s no difference.
“Well, it’s very much a ‘Let’s have a look at this exhibition’ sort of trip, put in the context of that whole stretch of Normandy coast, and what Bayeux is like without the tapestry, because obviously, that’s coming to the British Museum…” and he’s off. “Is there still a reason to go to Bayeux? Well I shall find out, and I haven’t been to France for a long time, so I can look at how the Entry/Exit System is working out, and all that stuff. So yes, there’s a fair amount of work, but it’s all just discovering things, isn’t it?”
But he does go on holiday sometimes? I press. He looks doubtful. Or has work and holidays blended in so much that it’s all the same? “Oh completely blended, yes.”
Would he ever go on a trip with his family or a friend without writing about it or incorporating it into a podcast?
“Well everything is research, isn’t it, so even just going through Gatwick it’s interesting to see how the security is working, can you take a bottle of water, are they going to want facial biometrics, all that stuff. So everything is research, but everything is fun as well.” He beams.
When did he last go on holiday with his wife? (He married Charlotte Hindle in 1997, and they have two daughters, Daisy, 25, and Poppy, 23.)
He thinks. “The last big trip we did was to see friends and family in Australia, and then coming back via Indonesia and then via Abu Dhabi…” I interrupt. And does she like travelling the same way he does?
Calder looks slightly sheepish. “Well I probably enjoy a one-star family hotel more than she does,” he admits. “And certainly more than our daughters do. There’s a wonderful hotel in Girona called the Europa which has two stars and is absolutely solid 1960s and I just love it. But they were very unimpressed.”
So did they stay elsewhere? “No. They stayed there, but they grumbled.”
