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.

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.
January isn’t the best time for a seaside break in the UK, but when The Cumberland Hotel invited us to stay with them in Bournemouth, we couldn’t resist the chance to visit our former home, which has also been voted the top seaside town in the UK. After a low-key New Year’s Eve, it was great to kick off 2018 with a serene break on the coast before we head to South America.
As the year draws to a close and we prepare to leave for South America in January, it’s time to take a look at our 2017 travel roundup. I feel incredibly blessed to have enjoyed yet another year full of new experiences, adventures and travel. In 2017, we managed to live in Thailand, trek to Everest Base Camp, explore Sri Lanka and road-trip around Europe. We got married, went vegan, continued to earn a living remotely and, of course, blogged about it all.
Big news - we’ve just booked flights to Colombia in January! As I write this we’re on the ferry back to the UK to celebrate the festive season with family before we begin our 2018 adventures. Driving home for Christmas has taken us to the supreme Cologne xmas markets and to Bruges, which may well be the most beautiful European city we’ve visited to date. Here’s the lowdown on our festive journey and South American plans.
It’s only now, when we’re just about to set off on a new adventure, that I’ve felt inspired to sit down and write. Amongst all the recent summer house sits, family get-togethers and work, I somehow lost my will to write. Now the car is ready to be packed, there’s a map with a route through Europe etched in our heads and I’m ready to face the road, and the blank page, once again.
From Welsh weddings to hiking Snowdon and house sitting all around London, these past two months in the UK have been crammed with activity. Between family visits and zipping around the country we’ve definitely dropped the ball with work, blogging and planning for our upcoming Europe trip. So, as we start to pull ourselves together again, here’s a look back at our hectic summer adventures in the UK.
Since we left the UK in 2013, Andrew and I have stayed in hundreds of hostels, hotels, guesthouses, apartments and Airbnb places. While some have been incredible, like our five-star honeymoon suite in Thailand, we’ve also stayed in some real dives and battled with bedbugs more than once. Here’s a look at five of the most unusual travel stays we’ve experienced to date, from a longhouse in Malaysia to a lavish London pig sit.
It’s six am and a cat is prodding me. Now, I can hear the dogs rucking around downstairs followed by the insistent snorting of pigs in the garden. Yes, pigs. Welcome to our first London house sit of the summer! We’ve taken up temporary residence in a beautiful, leafy part of west London that we’d never in a million years be able to afford to really live in. Have I mentioned how much we love house sitting?
Hello from a very uncharacteristically warm UK! In fact, news channels have been declaring that we’re in the midst of a heat wave (or at least we were last week when I drafted this post). As always, it’s good to return to The Island for our annual summer visit, but future travels are never far from our minds. So, what are our plans for the rest of the year?