Castles and stately homes may dot the landscape, but the true character of England lies in it’s eccentricities, many of which can easily be witnessed by visitors if they happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Luckily, VisitEngland.com, the official tourism body for England, is making it easy to for visitors to be in the right place at the right time with their list of the some of the most unusual events  scheduled to take place throughout England during 2010.

The quirky one-of-a-kind events include the annual World Coal Carrying Championships, held on Easter Monday (April 5) in the West Yorkshire village of Gawthorpe, the Worcestershire Asparagus Festival held in the rural market town of Evesham every spring to mark the beginning of the English Asparagus season, the Annual (stinging) Nettle-Eating Contest (June 12-13) in Dorset, the World Toe Wrestling Championship (August) in Derbyshire, and the World Snail Racing Championships (July 17) in Norfork.

But the VisitEngland.com list is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to England’s eccentricities and quirkiness.

A recent read of The Bradt Guide to Eccentric Britain revealed that England, with it’s unbelievable customs, daft sports and strange rituals, is really awash in quirkiness. The author, Benedict le Vay, was once a sub-editor for the Daily Mail, during which time he had the opportunity to explore and discover the full extent of Britain’s eccentricities. And uncover them he did.

The book, a must read for any traveller to England who wants to know where to expect the unexpected, provides in depth look at not only on Britain’s ongoing eccentricities but also the history of some of Britain’s oddest eccentrics. And by dividing the chapters by subject rather than geographic location, author Benedict le Vay has created a highly readable and entertaining travel guide.

My copy of The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey quotes the Washington Post’s review on its back cover: “There are far too many books in which a travel writer follows in the footsteps of his or her hero—and there are far too few books like this, in which an author who has spent time and energy ferreting out material from archival sources weaves it into a gripping tale.”

As much as I’m inclined to defend those footstep-following travel writers, an actual reading of The River of Doubt bears out that reviewer. A narrative that depends on the writer’s own observations and experiences, with flashbacks and notes regarding those whose footsteps they’re following, no matter how well written, cannot give readers the visceral experience promised by a narrative relying solely on the original explorers’ writing.

Author Candice Millard delivers the kind of heart-in-mouth, exquisitely detailed tale you’d expect from a former writer and editor for National Geographic. The River of Doubt is a careful and riveting story of the journey that former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt took after his depressing failure to win a third presidential term in office.

In 1912 Roosevelt corralled a naturalist, a famous Brazilian explorer, and his own son Kermit into an expedition to chart one of the Amazon’s unmapped, jungle-choked tributary rivers. The river had so thoroughly defeated previous attempts at exploration that it was dubbed the River of Doubt.

The expedition was poorly equipped, having relied on a supplier whose previous journey into the Arctic had ended in disaster, and a priest, a close friend of Roosevelt’s, who had little idea of the true physical hardships an Amazonian exploration would entail.

Millard is a master storyteller here, telescoping in to a tight focus on experiences from first-hand journal entries from the expedition’s commanders, including Roosevelt’s, then out briefly to a modern understanding of the Amazon jungle’s ecology and the native Indian tribes who inhabited it at the time, and back in again to the expedition’s heartbreaking and often deadly trials.

The book is fascinating on so many levels. There is the journey itself, the kind of knowledge-or-death scientific endeavor of that era we can’t seem to get enough of. There is the everyday drama of near-starvation, a constant battle with malaria and dysentery, the haunting survival-of-the-fittest ethic of the Amazon ecosystem, losing essential canoes and supplies to the River of Doubt’s many rapids, murder among the ranks, a drowning, and Roosevelt’s own near-suicide when he becomes so injured and ill that he fears costing others’ lives through his inability to function.

There is the tension surrounding this great man, who, although he had served two terms as president and would become one of the country’s most remembered leaders, felt that he hadn’t done anything of significance in his life. Millard skillfully weaves in his own restless energy, his fears for his son, the punishing and self-reliant way he’d raised his children, his essential if unacknowledged humanism, his lonely wife, and his bullish and bullheaded beliefs about America’s place in the world.

But what caught my attention more than any other detail of this incredible book was the way Millard dealt with class, and with it, racial tension.

As with any expedition of the time, the high-class (usually white) leaders got the credit and glory, while their adventure was made possible only by the underpaid, backbreaking, life-threatening labor of many unknown local men. The River of Doubt is one of the few books I’ve ever read that handles this issue without either turning it into a classist manifesto (that is, railing against Roosevelt and others who have cost countless lives through their desire for adventure), yet without ignoring the contribution that the expedition’s camaradas made to its—and indeed Roosevelt’s and his son’s—survival.

In other words, Millard balances respect and acknowledgment of all contributions (including the role a local Indian tribe played by choosing not to murder the entire expedition—a decision the expedition members were never aware of) without ever letting myriad issues cloud the story she is telling.

And what a story it is. It’s been a long time since I read a travel book that was as well put together, where not only the quotes chosen but the words used showed the hand of a craftsperson who didn’t let her own ego get in the way of the narrative.

I came away from The River of Doubt with a renewed respect for the Amazon jungle and its incredible ecosystem, but also with renewed respect for Theodore Roosevelt. In this book Millard has given us a new understanding of what drove the man through his life, and the dual thrills of adventure and scientific discovery he craved at its peak.

What is a one- or two-sentence description of “an American?” or “American culture?”

When we lived in the Netherlands a few years ago, my daughter’s International School planned a Culture Day to be held in the school gym. When the call for parent volunteers went out, I had fits of guilt that I wasn’t doing enough Mom stuff for my kid, so I showed up at the first planning meeting.

The school primarily served the children of people working at the NATO headquarters in town, so there was a great mix of parent nationalities at the meeting. For some reason, though, I happened to be the only US parent, so I ended up as “The US Booth Planning Committee of One.”

That meant that I had to figure out how to encapsulate my nation in a 6-foot-long folding table in a gym….talk about something that forces you to figure out your national identity!

For the first time in my life (even though this was my 3rd go-round living overseas as a US expat) I had to ask myself, “What does it mean to be an American?”

I spent time at college Web sites looking through their American Studies courses (here’s the University of North Carolina’s American Studies classes and the Crossroads project at Georgetown University) reading foundational documents like John Winthrop’s 1630 “City Upon on a Hill,” reading up on the pioneers and American explorers,  investigating the beginnings of the Internet and Web culture in Silicon Valley and ordering posters – Martin Luther King, cowboys, space and other Americana – from AllPosters.com (such things were hard to find on the Dutch economy, as you might imagine.)

After a lot of poking about and also asking a variety of Dutch, German, Czech, Norwegian, British, Canadian, Polish and Belgian colleagues to describe my country in only a few words and phrases, here is how I grouped my posters and table memorabilia:

**  The cowboy influence.  As foreign as the American West may seem to someone in the modern Bronx or Birmingham, it is absolutely central to our culture because it represents wide open spaces, exploration, freedom and self-reliance.  They are the underpinning to what makes us tick.

**  We don’t care about your ancestors. Several people told me how much they admired and yes, envied, how relatively free Americans are from expectations based on “what Daddy did.”  No one really cares about where you’re from or the importance of your aristocratic family; we’re all about what you’ve done.  Many in other countries still find their dreams and ambitions quite hamstrung by their family origins.

**  The automobile. Thanks in part to Henry Ford, we have a machine that encompasses everything we like:  individuality, freedom (road trip!) the clarion call of huge but drivable distances,  acceptance of picking up and moving, all matched up with a national restlessness.

**  The freedom to fail. It had never occurred to me, but many outside the US admire the fact that we allow people to really blow it, but we encourage and in fact expect that they will try again.   This ethos persists in today’s Internet culture, where you’re often seen as a failure if you haven’t failed (you must not be trying hard enough, right?)

Why doesn’t Europe build a Google?  Chirdeep Singh Chhabra says that Europeans need to learn to fail, and TechCrunch journalist Mike Butcher weighs in on pointless criticism of others’ efforts instead of how Silicon Valley tries to learn from failure.

**  Music. It’s rather extraordinary, the impact that my country has had and continues to have on music.

Jazz. Blues. Rock. Hip-Hop.  Unique niche music like Cajun, ragtime and tejano.  The breadth and depth is unmatched.

**  Exploration and new frontiers. We never stop. From Lewis and Clark to the Wright Brothers flying at Kitty Hawk to outer space, we are always looking over the mountain and wondering what’s on the other side.

The most important lesson I learned from preparing for Culture Day was how many clichés still ring true in my country:  ”The chance to be whatever you want to be.”  ”Saying what you think.”  Everyone is from somewhere else.  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The United States has its problems, there is no doubt about that, yet so many still try to move here. Why?  A recent article in The Economist, Going to America (subtitled “the greatest strength of America is that people want to live there”) addresses issues of immigration and why people still line up to come here and start a new life. Regarding a study of desirability factors:

“It is also a mistake to rate Americans as less tolerant because they are nationalistic. Americans may have an annoyingly high opinion of their country, but theirs is an inclusive nationalism. Most believe that anyone can become American. Almost nobody in Japan thinks that anyone can become Japanese, yet Japan is rated more “tolerant” than America. This is absurd.”

Like many Americans, I spend a lot of time fussing over what’s going wrong with my country and how it doesn’t live up to its ideals. The cure for that, ironically, is to leave it for extended periods of time as an expat or for lengthy travel. Depending upon where I go, I’m always grateful upon return that I can twist the knobs on any faucet in my country, and drinkable water magically flows.  I’m also grateful that I can pretty much do what I want and be who I am.

How’d the Culture Day event go?  Well, I think people thought my table was a little “heavy” for middle-schoolers (and one American teacher asked me why there was no Harley-Davidson display. Sigh.)

For me personally, it was a smashing success.

When I first heard that Royal Caribbean was planning to dock its cruise ship off Haiti, as scheduled, mere days after one of the most deadly natural disasters in this hemisphere, like many I pursed my lips and shook my head. How could it be that a cruise ship could roll in to Haitian waters for fun in the sun, while hundreds of thousands are dead, dying or grievously injured?

The question occurred to people on the ship too, according to this oft-quoted Guardian article :

The decision to go ahead with the visit has divided passengers. The ships carry some food aid, and the cruise line has pledged to donate all proceeds from the visit to help stricken Haitians. But many passengers will stay aboard when they dock; one said he was “sickened”.

“I just can’t see myself sunning on the beach, playing in the water, eating a barbecue, and enjoying a cocktail while [in Port-au-Prince] there are tens of thousands of dead people being piled up on the streets, with the survivors stunned and looking for food and water,” one passenger wrote on the Cruise Critic internet forum.

“It was hard enough to sit and eat a picnic lunch at Labadee before the quake, knowing how many Haitians were starving,” said another. “I can’t imagine having to choke down a burger there now.”

Certainly, there’s visceral level of queasiness that results from juxtaposing the images of cavorting cruising tourists with the images of wholesale death and destruction in Haiti. It seems like a “let them eat cake” level of callousness.  But I would argue that refusing to go ashore, especially when Royal Caribbean pledges all its net profits from the visit to disaster relief, is making a choice on the basis of appearances rather than logic. It’s a choice that allows travelers on the ship to feel better about themselves and their position in the world, rather than doing any actual good at all. It’s a panacea.

Yes. It hardly seems fair that while some people are dying and starving and thirsty, others are living it up, with not only plenty of food and water, but with extras like booze and ziplines and hammocks. Inequality is a serious problem in this world, and it’s one that any traveler who ventures past the boundaries of wealthy nations must grapple with if they’re paying even the slightest bit of attention. Check out the UN Human Development Index, which is a composite index which takes into account life expectancy, access to knowledge and standard of living – more than half the world places in the medium to low development categories. (And Haiti placed in the “medium” development category, for what it’s worth.)

While I understand that it feels unseemly to be eating, drinking and enjoying while others suffer, and especially in the face of such extreme suffering, the fact is, even without a natural disaster, this is happening every single day. The inequities of the world don’t disappear simply because you opt to take your entertainment inside a cruise ship, rather than disembarking in Labedee, or choosing a ship with an itinerary that goes to different port, or even if you’re traveling somewhere else entirely.  It is a moral problem to be a person of privilege in a world where the majority of people are not.

There are many ways in which you can choose to deal with this moral problem, but the economic impact of travel is indisputable. International tourism generates over one trillion dollars a year, more than $3 billion dollars a day. These dollars generate jobs, income, access to health care, education, mobility. (In some cases it even protects natural resources, since it’s often natural resources that attract tourists in the first place.) No, I’m not saying tourism is a perfect solution to the world’s woes, or that its receipts are equally distributed or even fairly distributed –  but countries that cannot attract their share of tourist dollars have a hard time digging themselves out of the hole.   Look at the 24 countries that qualify as “Low Human Development” according to the UN.  Most are an in Africa, a few are in outright civil war, but none of them are major international tourist destinations at this point.

The port in Labadee is unsuitable for cargo ships, it can’t be used in the relief effort.  It is suitable for cruise ships.  There are two hundred people that are employed in this area, and they are doubtlessly experiencing a huge strain on their own personal resources as their country lies in shambles around them. How would losing their jobs, even temporarily, help these people?  If you’re planning to travel, and want to help, booking a trip on this ship isn’t all that different that doing something that you’d normally do, like dining out, or purchasing a product on Etsy, or the like. (Giving directly is better, of course.)

I also recognize that there are arguments to be made about what Royal Caribbean can and should be doing. I’m generally persuaded by attorney Jim Walker’s argument that Royal Caribbean could and probably should be doing more in Haiti. But when I asked Walker for a clarification on Twitter today, he said “I’m not proposing leaving Labadee, rather paying Haiti fairly – $100 per psngr = $600,000 rather than $36,000 per week.”

Still, common sense says that something is better than nothing. So if you’re on board the ship — or a have already booked your itinerary through Haiti, or are contemplating a cruise holiday, I urge you to go ashore, spend some money, spend a little extra, even. In any event, don’t discount Haiti out of hand. Yes, if you go elsewhere, you’ll likely avoid this particularly uncomfortable confrontation of your own luck and fortune stacked up against the misery of many others. That’s not for everyone. But remember, the choice to go elsewhere — and certainly to stay aboard the ship — won’t make anything easier for anyone but yourself.

For many New Zealanders, summertime means just one thing – time to pack up the tent and the kids and head for the great outdoors. It’s a popular pastime which had some people, due to the sale and subsequent closure of some iconic coastal campgrounds a few years ago, speculating on ‘the death of the campground’.

But fear not. It appears, even though the weather has been a little grey, wet, and cool,  camping in New Zealand is alive and well. In fact, rather than a decline, there has been a resurgence in the quintessential Kiwi camping holiday. Some say this is due to the recession while others think it’s due to nostalgia for the good old days. But whatever the cause, camping in New Zealand is definitely in vogue.

From the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island, New Zealand is a camper’s paradise, with over 800 auto-accessible campsites to be found at some the most spectacular locations around. Some of privately run, while others are maintained by the New Zealand government’s Department of Conservation.

A new book, Let’s Go Camping, by travel writers Sarah Bennett and Lee Slater in conjunction with the New Zealand Automobile Association, highlights just 66 of these sites. Enthusiastic campers, Bennett and Slater spent months travelling around New Zealand, testing out the campsites, and documenting their favourites.

With plenty of stunning photographs,  Let’s Go Camping might look more like a coffee table book than a campground guide. But start reading and you’ll soon discover it is jammed back with information, covering everything from how to camp to protecting the environment.

The book is laid out geographically, with two or three campgrounds highlighted in each region, followed by a more extensive AA listing of other campsites in the region.

For each of the hand-picked campgrounds, there is an in-depth review focusing not only on their special features but also the necessary practical and background information to help campers make an informed decision. There is also information on what to do in that selected area, covering everything from quirky cafes to hiking trails.

Bennett and Slater, who also wrote the definitive tramping book Don’t Forget Your Scroggin, have put in the miles and done their homework. Not only have they found the best campgrounds in the most stunning locations, they have also discovered (and reported) on those featuring exceptional facilities and ambience. As a result, those using Let’s Go Camping to plan their camping holiday are all but guaranteed to experience a quintessential New Zealand experience.