First published: Sun 03 Nov 2024.
Els Slots
Maddeningly Close
Comments
15 comments
Kyle Magnuson
8 months, 1 week ago (Nov 3, 2024)
I have corrected some misses in the past. So I only have 2 frustrating misses. An early one from 2011 in Palawan, due to weather, poor planning and travel fatigue. The other, also poor planning for touring the Luis Barragán House in Mexico City. Lessons have been learned, in the decade plus since, my planning is much more thorough. Additionally, I try to provide ample time for most high-interest WHS in case of poor weather or in case of an unforeseen issue that might negatively affect my appreciation of its OUV.
Puerto-Princesa Subterranean River National Park (Palawan, Philippines)
Luis Barragán House and Studio (DF, Mexico
Reply
Solivagant
8 months ago (Nov 3, 2024)
Could I suggest something along the lines of "Final leg failure"... or even "fate" .... you knew about the site...you have made a reasonable plan... and have done everythng you could reasonably have been expected to do to implement it ...but then that last leg didn't work out for no good reason. You don't even have to have got that close.... all it needed was one more travel step. I think you have one of these els - St Kilda!
I have Târgu Jiu, long before it was inscribed - only 40kms away and was invovled in a traffic accident - not my fault but the police hassle etc meant i never got there!
There is a thin line of course between "bad luck" and "bad planning"..... If you arrive to find a place closed then should you have known? If the boat didn't sail was it because you chose the wrong route?
Els Slots
8 months ago (Nov 3, 2024)
That's a good one, Solivagant, but St. Kilda doesn't feel like a near miss to me, I have never been even close. Maybe I'd see it that way if we went out and had to turn around halfway for some reason. I have had other trips cancelled, like Sangha (during Covid, fortunately made up for it this year) or Syria *(had 2 trips cancelled earlier in my travel life).
Solivagant
8 months ago (Nov 3, 2024)
So you are introducing "feels like.." into the definition!! I can tell you that, if i had travelled across eurtope by plane, bus and car to the far north est of Sctoland.....was only a couple of hours away by a boat and the boat wouldn't take me there it would seem like a "near miss" to me!!
Solivagant
8 months ago (Nov 3, 2024)
By the way, i did say "final leg".... you cant compare trips which were cancelled even before you set out with ones where you were only 1 step away ...even if the objective was "over the horizon" and not actually seen....
Luboang
8 months ago (Nov 3, 2024)
I do have at least couple of sites on my visited list which I have seen long ago without any clue of their unique status. I will likely revisit them and potentially even remove them till then.
I did develop a kind of "mental hygiene practise" in regard to these situations like 'near misses' and its a simple fact that it gives me opportunity to re-visit regions, places and countries which are most of the time well worth repeated visit anyway...
Els Slots
8 months ago (Nov 3, 2024)
@Zoe - I think your experience and that of others at Al-Faw is more like "trying to visit the unvisitable". You were at the right location and you were aware of its (future) WH status (so not a near miss in that sense), but could not see the thing you came to see.
Wojciech Fedoruk
8 months ago (Nov 3, 2024)
Persian Karawanserai is my best example. How far it was from Bisotun town, 200-500m? The same for Kazan.
I also betted the wrong horse with the Welsh slate landscape and my final leg didn't work for Skellig. I am sure there are some more examples and there will be more, such as Alvaro Siza's architecture.
Solivagant
8 months ago (Nov 3, 2024)
@Els "Maybe that (Al-Faw) is a "Final leg failure" as well"....... IMO only if, with better planning or luck/fate one could have achieved that "final leg". i.e if you turned up on the wrong day or if the site wasn't open because the guardian was off ill (Yes that has happend to us....luckily we were able to rearrange!!)
Bernard Joseph Esposo Guerrero
8 months ago (Nov 3, 2024)
I remember skipping Soltaniyeh in the end while travelling from Kermanshah to Tabriz as I wasn't feeling well during that leg of the trip. It was on the way. Recently, in Italy, I was supposed to be seeing Villa d'Este and Villa Adriana on one day, which is very doable, but decided last minute to drop Villa Adriana mainly due to "Roman ruins" fatigue and instead spent the time in Tivoli itself. I felt the same thing when driving from Prague to Munich, where instead of squeezing both Holasovice and Cesky Krumlov together, I dropped the last one mainly because I got tired of old towns (super touristy at that) and preferred to spend more time in one low-key site. Silly of me to skip the Byeongsanseowon Confucian Academy too when I was in Hahoe, only to find out a year later that it would be a part of another WHS.
Philipp Peterer
8 months ago (Nov 3, 2024)
I also corrected most near misses. Those were Luis Barragan House, UNAM, Ephesus, Via Appia, St. Cathrine Monastery, Western Limes, Mafra Palace, Grand Canyon and more.
My current near misses are:
Was in the region, but missed to visit: Erfurt, Slate mines, Sitio Burle Marx, Cordouan, Grand Canal
Visit not successful, but intended: St. Kilda, Al-Faw, Sans Souci Citadel
Squiffy
8 months ago (Nov 4, 2024)
I came down with the galloping trots on the last day of a trip from St Petersburg to Beijing by train, back before I'd even heard of World Heritage Sites. Missed out on Temple of Heaven / Summer Palace as a result.
I was staying a couple of blocks away from the Parisian Le Corbusier elements at the point they got inscribed but they were closed on the day I was there so didn't bother prioritising going to see from the outside. Likewise I didn't prioritise going to see Palais Stoclet from the outside.
But at least those two are easily rectifiable. Buenos Aires is my Great White Whale. I've been within 2 miles of ESMA and within 2 blocks of the Argentine Workers' Assembly Hall.
Alikander
8 months ago (Nov 7, 2024)
The one that stings the most is Aachen cathedral. It was unesxpectedly closed the day I went. Turns out they had an event conmemorating the deaths from the 2019 flood.
I've also missed: "monuments of oviedo and the kingdom of asturias" and "palau de la musica catalana and the hospital of sant pau"
I'm kinda dubious on wether to count or nor the pamir national park and the coffee landscape of colombia as technically I wasn't inside either propperty, but their borders are honestly pretty random. I saw the lakes and the mountains of the pamir, I just didn't go inside the national park; and i tasted the coffee in a local coffe plantation in colombia plus saw the vernacular architecture of the region, it just so happens that that specific coffe plantation and towns i visited were not in the site.