Hello and welcome to my first post!

This post is going to tell you a little bit about me and why I have started the blog. I hope you find it interesting.

Back in 2003, at the ripe old age of 18, I decided to move to London to do the whole live/work/travel thing … I made it a grand total of 4 months and had done zero travel out of London in that time. I got incredibly home sick, I missed my family, my friends and I found that I wasn’t living the big adventure that I had expected. Looking back on it now I can see that I was far too young to really appreciate the opportunities I had at my finger tips and whilst for a long time I felt that I had wasted my one and only UK working visa, I now know that I needed this trip to learn more about myself and what I require to be happy & fulfilled.

As the years went by the type of travel I did started to change. There were less (only slightly) family holidays, more trips with friends and even some solo travel thrown in. I was traveling for approximately 4-5 weeks every year, sometimes on one long holiday, sometimes taking lots of smaller trips throughout the year, but one thing remained constant – I couldn’t get enough. I found myself starting to plan the next trip while I was still on one. I started to write lists of all the countries I wanted to visit, places I wanted to see, things I wanted to do.

In 2014, after working for the same company for nearly 8 years, I realised that for me to be truly happy I needed to do something bigger, better and completely different to what I was doing. I resisted the urges that most 30 year old’s feel – to settle down, try to buy a house, build a career etc. and instead I created a spreadsheet and started to plan. I knew that I had to be realistic about my goals and that if I was going to be able to take the trip that I wanted I would need to save a lot, and I mean A LOT. I decided that I would give myself until the end of 2016 to have everything in place, this included the plans, the money and the right state of mind.

The first draft of my proposed itinerary had me visiting nearly 40 countries over 12 months. I quickly realised that even with a full year away there was no way I could comfortably travel to all the places I wanted to, and so began the task of refining the plan. Right now I am still over a year away from departure and I am currently on version 8 of my plan. I am sure by the time I actually leave I’ll be somewhere in the 20+ region!

Now to the reasons I have started the blog. Little old me back in 2003 (very much an unintentional rhyme) didn’t have it anywhere near as easy as I do now when it comes to technology and staying connected. When I went on my first solo trip around Europe before moving to London I was only speaking to my family and friends once a week at the most. There was no Facebook back then, no Skype, smartphones didn’t exist and sure, I had email, but it just wasn’t feasible to be finding an internet cafe every few days to write an update – I had a lot of partying to do! So once a week I would buy an international calling card and then spend about 20 mins trying to work out how to use it on a random public phone. I would then spend 30 mins trying not to cry as I listened to the voices of my loved ones who just felt so so far away.

When I think back to the times I spent in those public phone boxes the world really does seem like a much smaller place now. The options we have for staying in touch are so vast, varied and readily available that I think I would struggle to feel truly alone anywhere in the world. The way we connect to each other has changed so much in the last 10 years that there is now a common theme of people feeling like they are actually too accessible or they find themselves annoyed at the stream of information about other people’s lives that they are not really that interested in. It is mainly because of this that I decided that starting a blog would be the best way to keep people updated while I am away, while also creating a sort of digital journal for myself.

After thinking about the idea of a blog for a while I realised that I was itching to start writing about my plans right away and I figured why not start now and actually include all the preparation that will go into this big trip. For anyone that really knows me you will know the planning part is almost as enjoyable as the travel itself.

So there you go, 858 words to answer that simple question. I can’t promise that I’ll keep my posts short or regular but I hope you will enjoy them anyway!