We had the best time ever on our journey to Beijing, Xian and Hong Kong and came back keen to experience more. This was our first trip out of Europe and we loved the strangeness of faraway places. We began to go away more and more working up to around five, mostly long-haul, holidays a year. We tried to alternate different types of holiday – a cruise followed by a tour followed by a fly drive. We covered a lot of ground gradually progressing from organised tours to spending hours booking flights and hotels/hostels ourselves.

If that first holiday had been a failure I would have a freshly decorated house with a utility room and probably a  new car. Instead I have photos from all around the world and memories of amazing sights from many countries.

So why blog?

In the early days of the internet I loved spending time browsing but in the last few years the blog has taken over if you search for anything travel related. Some of them are great, much better than I could do, and full of useful information. But too many are from youngsters urging everyone to travel endlessly like them on a small budget Then they show unbelievably beautiful stock photos and talk about places on their bucket list. I wonder how many places some of them have actually been to, often if you take out the guest posts and wish lists there is not much actual content left.

I don’t claim to be a real traveller we rarely  go away for more than six  weeks at a time. We are more serial holiday junkies but I do take my own photos and write about places we have actually been to.