3.- Words you need. Travel talk.

In this section we are going to learn words that have to do travel in general.

• 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 comes 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)

  • 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

• 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:

  • Christopher Columbus's second voyage (1493 - 1496) led to the discovery of several Caribbean islands. On his third voyage (1498 - 1500) he discovered the South American mainland.