Struggling to find the perfect Christmas gift for the travel lover in your life? Fear not as Elizabeth has put together a list of fabulous, travel-themed Christmas gifts that everyone will love. There are a couple of gifts on this list that I already have, such as the personalised leather camera strap and a giant …
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Happy Friday! This week’s Weekend Reads are coming to you from Egypt where it’s currently 9am and temperatures are already soaring towards 35 degrees. Yes, at 9am! I spent my first two days here doing exactly what you’re meant to do on a traditional, old-fashioned holiday. I did nothing. Absolutely nothing but read, eat, swim, …
As I write this I’m frantically rushing around trying to wash and re-pack my bags for my next adventure. I’ve been in Egypt for the past week but now it’s time for a different kind of adventure as I’m off on a 9-day trip around Europe! Side note: Trying to pack light for a European …
“A blogging…festival?” I can hear the cogs whirring already. “A blogging festival? What on earth is a blogging festival?” Well my friends, this weekend I was speaking at Blogstock, the world’s first blogging festival, and I can tell you that it was flipping marvelous. There are lots of conferences set up for bloggers from all …
Hello and happy Friday! I’m writing this from the sea as I sail from Mykonos to Istanbul. This week I’ve been travelling with Celebrity Cruises. We began in Venice on Monday, followed by Dubrovnik, Mykonos and finally Istanbul today. I’m having such an incredible time, not only in the destinations but also onboard the ship. …
It’s quick one this week as I’m writing this just before I head out to Blogstock! Blockstock is the world’s first blogging festival. It’s been put together by the guys behind Traverse, an informal and fun travel blogging conference. I spoke at the last conference about social media and I’ve been asked to speak again! …
It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve done a Weekend Reads post with my favourite blog posts and articles from around the blogosphere. Here are some great posts I’ve been loving over the past few weeks. Travel Writing Roundup {Caroline in the City} This is such a fantastic resource of travel websites, blogs and …
This summer, World Duty free is hosting a #SummerDrinksFestival to get us all recreating our favourite holiday cocktails at home. They asked me to get involved and do my best at making some tasty cocktails. This came at the perfect time because one of my best friends is home from Australia for a couple of …
Each year we spend the entire winter dreaming about beach holidays. White sands, blue seas, bright sunshine and golden tans. Arrhh, this is what dreams are made of. Just after Christmas we re-join the gym and spend hours finding the right skin care regimen, hoping that it will have us looking as beautiful as Beyonce …
This week has been one of my very rare chilled out weeks and I’ve loved every second of it. I’ve been having dinner with friends, drinking wine in the garden, walking my pooch and I had a couple of days in London working on exciting new projects – news on that coming soon! Here’s what …
Update: Unfortunately I was unable to take part in the Ironman as I’m having a baby. ******* You know when you agree to do something and then a few months later you think, ‘What the hell was I thinking? I can’t do that!’ Yea, that’s what happened with the Ironman. I was invited to take …
Hi there and welcome to another Weekend Reads where I share everything I’ve been reading and writing around the web this week. I’ve had another week at home while I’ve been doing my best to begin training for my Ironman challenge and catching up on blog writing. Here’s what I’ve been writing: I’m doing an …
This week has been busy but incredible as I travelled to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. I’m going to be writing all about it next week but I will say now that I LOVED it. Ljubljana is such a beautiful hidden gem and the small city makes a perfect weekend escape. I was there all week …
It’s been a while since I’ve written a Blog Reads post with some of my favourite posts, videos and competitions I’ve stumbled across in the blogosphere. Like always, life gets busy and once you’re out of a habit it’s hard to get back into it. These little updates on what I’m reading have somehow turned …
After spending an incredible three days in Barbados my journey got even better as I travelled to the island of St Kitts. I’d been told that St Kitts is much more chilled out and less developed than Barbados. I had no idea what to expect because Barbados is one of the most chilled out places …
Whenever I tell people I’m a full-time travel blogger I’m inevitably met by a quizzical frown and the question, ‘So…errrr…what do you actually do?’ I don’t mind the questions because it is such a new profession and sometimes I feel like I don’t quite understand it myself. Each travel blogger works in a completely different …
The observant readers among you may have noticed that I’ve changed this feature from Weekend Reads to Blog Reads. I should have realised that no one would read a post entitled ‘Weekend Reads’ on a Monday. Silly me. Anyways, this weeks Blog Reads are all about hacks. With a blog name like ‘The Travel Hack’ …
One of my favourite things about flying into a hot country is that moment when you step off the plane. It’s like walking into a heavy fog of glorious heat that instantly warms you all the way to your bones. You take a second before you begin your descent down the wobbily plane steps to …
Today’s prompt for Vlogmas is ‘Why I Podcast’, but as I don’t podcast I’m changing it to ‘Why I blog’. Unlike the past few days, I haven’t had any problems thinking of my answer for this prompt. There are lots of reasons why I blog. Where do I even begin!? I’m going to tackle each …
Everyone makes mistakes when they travel and I’ve made so many it would be impossible to recall them all. I do my best not to dwell on things or regret anything. I think as long as you learn from your mistakes it makes you a better traveller in the long run. Here are a few …
Have you ever said something and then the second the words have left your mouth you want to suck them back in and pretend they never happened? Imagine if you could just breathe them back in with a huge gasp of air. That would be good. That would get me out of a lot of …
2014 was an amazing year for The Travel Hack. This was the year I really got my teeth stuck in with blogging and I’m so amazingly lucky to be able to call this my job! My readership doubled during the year and The Travel Hack was named as one of the UK’s top 10 travel …
The worst thing that happened while I was travelling I spent nearly 2 years travelling through SE Asia and Australia and I was actually really lucky – barely anything went wrong. I was never disastrously ill or mugged. I never ran out of money or had to spend a night sleeping on the streets. I …
If you’re a travel lover then I’ve got no doubt you’ll be feeling like you’ve had your wings clipped right now. I know some people are optimistically booking holidays abroad for this year and I’m sure many of those holidays will go ahead, but I’m also sure many of them won’t! I haven’t booked any …
Starting from mid-March, Sam and I have decided to change our lives completely. We’re working towards ‘lifestyle careers’ where we plan to work less and live more and we’ll both be working with a 4-day weekend. Just excuse me while I go and do a happy dance in the corner for a few minutes!! I …
I think we can all agree that 2020 was an absolute shitter of a year and we’re all sat at home optimistically hoping for bigger and better things for 2021. I wrote a blog post this time last year, ‘20 things I want to do in 2020‘, and I actually did do most of them! …
Since uploading the post on Wednesday about the ‘What vacationer are you?’ I’ve been thinking a lot about my travel style. It took me a long time to figure out what my travel style is because I so often followed guides and ‘top 10 lists’ and recommendations from other people. When I was taking blog trips …
When I first saw today’s Podmas prompt I thought it wasn’t the most exciting but then I realised I’d never actually told you much about where I live and why. I live on the border of Chester and North Wales and the simple reason I live here is because this is where I was raised. …
Why is it that travelling far away always seems so much more exotic than travelling close to home? What is it that makes us want to spend hours in the car, hours queueing at airports, hours crammed onto tiny planes and hours waiting to get through immigration when we could travel to very similar places, …
If you’re looking for things to do in Chester then you’ve come to the right place! I’ve lived on the outskirts of Chester for most of my life so here are some of my favourites! Chester is one of the country’s most important heritage cities and, in my opinion, it’s also one of the most …