Did you mean "adventure"?

No. I meant ‘aventure.’ It’s an old word. It's mostly obsolete. I think it’s a good word. It does sound like ‘adventure’ and has a sense of that too, but its chief meaning as I use it – as Chaucer used it – is chance.

But I'm certainly not discouraging adventure.

It’s the end of March now, almost time for April and (I hope) its showers sweet in both hemispheres, to offer some relief from the summer droughts in much of New Zealand and to bring in the spring (flowers, many birds, etcetera) in the United Kingdom. I’m going on a pilgrimage of sorts, one could poetically imagine, though I’m no palmer. I want to see some of the places where some stories and dreams that I know began. Britain is full of literature, landscapes, and history – including some of my own. I am looking forward in particular to visiting Scotland where much of my ancestry on both sides lies, and particularly Ullapool where my great grandfather came from. Also, I want to see puffins, foxes and Highland cattle in their native landscape. I’m sure I’ll find squirrels to be cute from a distance, but I've read too many Robin Jarvis books to trust them (or alchemists).

So my pilgrimage begins tomorrow with a departure from Wellington airport and a long journey (two short stopovers in foreign airports) to arrive in Manchester airport bedraggled and confused and hoping like hell that my luggage is going to come out that other end. I haven’t been on an international flight before. Luckily, I will have a friend meeting me in the airport to rescue me and guide me on my first British rail journey to York, where I will properly prepare myself to wenden out on my adventure with a nice long horizontal sleep.

I have some plans, but I’m also hoping for that sense of serendipity, fortune and coincidence that comes with aventure. Chaucer’s narrator (‘General Prologue’ for “The Canterbury Tales,” just so we’re clear) first finds it when he, in that now-famous Tabard Tavern, encounters sundry folk who provide him with the fodder for an entire poem that is one of the most famous pieces of literature around. I’m not intending for the same thing to happen on my short two-month journey as I’m not as self-confident or skilled as perhaps Geoffrey was, but I do hope to practice my writing as I go along, and I do know that I will have a jolly good time ra-ther.

It's going to be fun.