UK

The UK is our home country and despite all its faults (Brexit for one…) we still believe it’s a country worth visiting. London was our home for four years before we left to travel and it remains our favourite city in the world. We usually return to the UK at least once a year to visit family and friends and do some house sitting in the capital. Check out our travel musings and stories from the UK.

Merry Christmas from Portugal. Yes, we finally escaped the UK winter, not to Vietnam as we’d planned but back to our former home in the Algarve. This wasn’t where we thought we’d end up but as the year comes to a close, we’re just grateful to be anywhere other than the UK. It’s been a strange year, that’s for sure.However, I know that compared to...

For me, September always feels like a new beginning. As the season and the leaves change, we’re usually making fresh life plans and in recent years, we’ve done so from our regular September catsit. Despite Covid, the homeowners here have been able to take their annual Norfolk trip so we’re back in Chiswick once again, trying to figure out how to navigate travel and housing...

It’s been months since I blogged and, during that time, the world has become an unrecognisable ruin. Ravaged by a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands and decimated the economy. Who could have imagined a world where planes were grounded, borders closed, whole countries locked down? On top of that, the USA bleeding and burning with social injustice. I couldn’t. Even in the dozens...

So far, 2020 has not been a great year for travel. While the Coronavirus pandemic rages and the fallout spreads around the world, we’re continuing to work and housesit in the UK. Winter has been tough on my wanderlust though and one of the bright spots on the horizon was our Easter European road trip, which was set to begin in Italy. Given the events...

What better way to banish the bleak January blues than with a weekend getaway? We opted for one of the UK’s most historic cities that we’ve yet to explore: Oxford. Known as the City of Dreaming Spires for its 38 grand university colleges, the compact city has a walkable, medieval centre packed with history. From staying at a riverside inn to scaling towers and discovering...

Happy New Year from the UK, where we’ve just spent Christmas with family in Wales and Hampshire. The days have been filled with drizzly dog walks, baby time with our growing horde of nephews and nieces, festive TV and (perhaps too much) delicious vegan food. As per usual, now’s the time to take a look back at 2019 – which marks the end of a...

It’s dark, bleak and rainy outside. For the first time in nearly eight years, we’re back in the UK for autumn and winter. Wondering what we’re doing here when we could be on a tropical beach somewhere? Life has certainly changed for us over the past few months, so I thought it was time for an update post. Here’s the lowdown on what we’ve been...

Early morning sunlight filtered through the trees as we gently stretched. It was the final day of our yoga retreat Scotland at ACE Adventures and the week had been filled with quiet moments like this. There had been campfires on the beach, river walks and evening meditation sessions, all contrasted with a day of adrenaline-pumping white water rafting.
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.
After an incredible year of adventures in South America and the USA, we touched down in London in July for our annual UK summer visit. As usual, we’ve been hopping around the country visiting friends and family, but this year we also drove up north for a work trip that involved exciting adventure activities Scotland including canyoning, tubing and our first white water rafting experience.