Once upon a time, gap years were seen as a ‘pre-university’ rite of passage. A year of backpacking on a shoe-string budget through Southeast Asia, fruit picking in Australia, drunken nights and hostel dorm rooms. Or, so I’ve heard, because I never actually took one. It wasn’t until Andrew and I were approaching our 30s that we set off on our own trip and nearly...

10 December, 2018 /

Hello! After weeks of radio silence, we’re finally back with a new site design. What do you think? It’s been a much longer, scarier process than we imagined and there’s still lots more work to do behind the scenes, but we’re pretty happy with the results. While the re-design has been dominating our free time for the last month, I thought I’d also give you...

06 December, 2018 /

After nearly six years of travel, we’ve got packing down to a fine art. Whether we’re backpacking through Asia or road tripping in the USA, there are some travel items we’ve discovered we can’t live without on the road. From insurance to Kindles and Earl Grey tea bags, here are 10 essential travel items we never leave home without....

29 October, 2018 /
Hello from London, where we’re housesitting for a couple of weeks before we start the next chapter of our adventure: we’re moving to the Algarve! After a hectic year of travel in the Americas, our plan was always to move to Portugal in the autumn, but we had our sights firmly set on Porto until Andrew was offered a great teaching job in the Algarve.
06 September, 2018 /
Hello from Oregon, USA! I’m writing this from a caravan overlooking the red outcrops of Smith Rock State Park, with a cup of Earl Grey beside me, reflecting on how long it’s been since I blogged. In fact, my last post was back in Lake Titicaca, which now feels like years ago. Since then, we’ve travelled through Peru, visited Machu Picchu and spent three idyllic weeks road tripping in California. Somewhere along the way, amongst dealing with a ton of freelance work and a house-sitting disaster, I just had to let blogging go, but now I’m back.
25 June, 2018 /
It’s been five years since we visited Australia and we barely scratched the surface during our five-week adventure. So where would we visit on a return trip? Top of the list would be one of our favourite cities, Melbourne, followed by Queensland highlights. The Sunshine State has so much to offer, from Five World Natural Heritage Areas including the Great Barrier Reef, to bushwalking in the outback and whale watching. Combine that with 7,000 kilometres of idyllic coastline and an average nine hours of sunshine a day and what’s not to love?
30 April, 2018 /
Last week we celebrated five years of travel, can you believe that? I still vividly remember waving goodbye to our families at Heathrow in 2013, clutching our brand-new backpacks and one-way tickets to New Zealand, heading off on what we thought would be a two-year trip around the world. Yet, here we are in Colombia five years later, reflecting on both the amazing and tough aspects of this nomadic lifestyle we’ve managed to carve for ourselves.
07 March, 2018 /
Tomorrow we set off for Colombia! We’ve been talking about this South America trip for so many years that it’s taken on a surreal, dream-like quality for me. Now it’s a tangible thing. This time tomorrow we’ll be zooming across the sky to the other side of the world. Here’s a look at how we’ve prepared for this adventure, from buying a new camera to organising insurance, researching visas and compiling our packing list.
13 January, 2018 /
Despite having just booked one-way tickets to Colombia, Andrew and I have been talking a lot lately about finding a future base in Europe. As much as we love our freedom, we know that after our South American adventures we’ll need to find a base in Europe where we can hang up our backpacks, work and save for the years ahead, but where could that base possibly be? Well, I think we found our answer when we rocked up in Porto.
03 January, 2018 /