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Travel: Trip Report: Flying Barges 2
How I Built a Travel Jenga
The pandemic interrupted the orderly flow of annual BookCrossing.com conventions.
Every April since 2004 a city somewhere around the world has hosted a convention to celebrate the anniversary of the site: St Louis, Christchurch, London, Toronto, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Gothenburg, Bordeaux…
I’ve attended most of them, not to mention various more localised “Unconventions”. Each one a tonne of fun with friends and an excuse for travel.
Mainz in Germany was the last one, in 2019, and a couple of we Aussies made a presentation pitching the delights of the 2020 world convention on the Gold Coast.
We had booked the function room at the Broadbeach Surf Club and we were going all out to entice our Northern Hemisphere friends Down Under.
And then Covid. February saw things begin to wobble and in March the borders slammed shut.
End of the dream.
We eventually held a watered-down Unconvention in April 2022 with a single international visitor — from New Zealand — and no more BookCrossing conventions on the horizon.
Finland had been slated for the 2021 con but their organising team had postponed and eventually cancelled their operation.
Scotland steps up
In late 2022 with Covid and its various mutant strains receding as a threat to international travel, and no April gathering planned, the UK BookCrossers decided to upgrade their national Unconvention in the Northern Summer into the 2023 Convention.
Originally a low-key affair — and who can blame them in the years of uncertainty? — in a modestly-sized cafe and function centre in the town of Falkirk midway between Edinburgh and Glasgow, this was now to host a gathering that typically attracted at least a hundred visitors from around the world.
Just forty this time. All that the venue could hold without breaking fire regulations.
Still, better than nothing, I put my name down for a place before the tickets sold out.
