The most important lessons children learn from travelling

Tales of the grotesque and threatening Adamastor storms at the Cape of Good Hope stirred up somber schoolroom days; and I vowed I would see it for myself when I grew up.

Thinking it was one of the most romantic names in the world, I wanted to be where the 15th Century Portuguese navigators bridged the late Middle Ages to the Early Renaissance, with their audacious persistence in rounding the headland; without knowing what was ahead of them.

I wanted to witness the colours of the ocean where the icy Antarctic met the warmth of the Indian, and rogue waves littered the shore with wrecks.

They didn’t teach us in school that actually the southern most tip was Cape Agulhas, 90 miles South South East along the coast. I also never imagined I would be a mother sitting on a stretch of sand feeding my 11month old baby when I did finally make it.

However, my reality of seeing the wrong cape with my child turned out to be the right thing to begin a personal journey into the unknown. My sons have now sat in my arms off the southern tip of Africa, India and Australia; and they have seen the curve of the Earth in the horizon, and on to the universe beyond it.

They have sat on the deck of a dhow made from hull boards sewn together with cords, under a billowing lateen sail pulling us back into a safe harbour. They have sat on the roof of cars and been startled by the majesty of African elephants at the waterhole, and sat on the sidewalks of Hong Kong looking up at the monolithic skylines.

They have sat down to feed kangaroos in Australia, sat on Route 66 eating candy thrown by the good old parade rolling by, and sat listening to the song of the dancing snake on the dirt streets of India.

Little by little the experience of travel as a series of extraordinary novelties began to open up the neurological trade routes within my sons, along which meaning and understanding could be shipped back and fourth.

On the savannahs of Africa they learnt that, when two elephants fight it is the grass that gets trampled. On a station in the outback of Australia – where cigarettes are sold in packs of sixty because that is how long ranchers are gone mustering – they learnt a person only looks at their watch if they have to be somewhere else.

From the streets of Hong Kong – despite the lucky red Feng shui ribbons on the doors, and dragons coming down from the mountain to drink in the bay below – they learnt we are all more similar than we are different. Through random kindness across the continent of America – where grandiose optimism and positivity is almost sanctified – they learnt that a sermon is better lived than preached.

Everywhere they have learnt to love this life, and learnt the power of gratitude to transform a day; they have learnt those values, and useful skills, and more.