It's
the right time of year to talk about travel as the holiday season
is now beginning in most countries north of the equator.
travel/travelling (nouns)
Travel is the general term to describe going from one place
to another. We can talk about someone's travels to refer
to the journeys he makes:
His travels abroad provided lots of background material
for novels he wrote.
Travelling is also a general term which refers to the activity
of travel:
Travelling by boat between the islands is less tiring
than travelling by road.
I don't do as much travelling as I used to now that
I'm retired.
Travel often crops up as part of compound nouns.
Compare the following:
Make sure you keep all your travel documents safely.
You can obtain your travel tickets from the travel agents
in the High Street if you don't want to order them over the Internet.
Some of you may suffer from travel sickness. Air travel
may well give you a bumpy ride. If you don't have a credit or
debit card, make sure you take plenty of traveller's cheques
with you.
We
often use travel as a verb:
I
love to travel during the summer holidays. This year I
plan to travel all around the Iberian Peninsula.
journey
(noun)
A journey
is one single piece of travel. You make journeys when you
travel from one place to another. (Note that the plural is spelt
journeys, not journies):
The
journey from London to Newcastle by train can now be completed
in under three hours.
We
can talk about journeys taking or lasting a long
time:
How
long did your journey take? ~ Oh, it lasted for ever. We
stopped at every small station.
We
occasionally use journey as a verb as an alternative to
travel, although it may sound a bit formal or poetic:
We
journeyed /travelled between the pyramids in Mexico on
horseback.
trip
(noun)
A trip
usually involves more than one single journey. We talk about
day trips, round trips and business trips. We make
journeys usually, but we go on trips:
I
went on a day trip to France. We left at 6.30 in the morning
and returned before midnight the same day.
The round-trip ticket enabled me to visit all the major
tourist destinations in India.
Where's
Laurie? ~ He won't be in this week. He's gone on a business
trip to Malaysia and Singapore.
The
trip went well. It was an old car, but we didn't break down
in four weeks of travelling
expedition
(noun)
An
expedition is an organised trip whose purpose is usually
scientific exploration of the environment. You go on expeditions,
just as you go on trips.
Numerous
expeditions to The Antarctic have ended in disaster.
Are
you going to join the expedition up the Amazon this year,
like the one Tom went on last year?
Less
dangerous and less adventurous are shopping expeditions
when you are hunting down particular goods or bargains and fishing
expeditions when you go in search of fish which are not easy
to locate or catch.
safari
(noun)
A safari
is a trip or expedition to observe wild animals in
their natural habitat in Africa, usually. You go on safari
to safari parks. In days gone by, you might have worn your
light cotton safari suit for this purpose:
His
one ambition in life was to go on safari to Kenya to photograph
lions and tigers.
cruise
(noun and verb)
A cruise
is a holiday during which you travel on a ship or boat
and visit a number of places en route. When we cruise, this
is exactly what we do:
They
cruised all around the Mediterranean for eight weeks last
summer and stopped off at a number of uninhabited islands.
My
parents have seen nothing of the world so are saving up to go
on a world cruise when they retire. They are hoping to
take a trip on the cruise liner, the QE2, in 2004.
voyage
(noun)
A voyage
is a long journey, not necessarily for pleasure, on a
ship. We don't talk about voyages very much in the present time,
but historically they were very significant:
His
second voyage (1493 - 96) led to the discovery of several
Caribbean islands. On his third voyage (1498 - 1500) he discovered
the South American mainland.
(Christopher Columbus, the great explorer)
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