Tag: New Year

New Year, Old Goals, New Focus?

As new year rolls around again, we’ve been looking back on some of our posts from last year and reviewing the goals that we set for 2018.

This time last year, we’d set ourselves the goals of doing more short breaks and perhaps getting another big trip in to somewhere exotic. None of that happened in 2018! Instead, the money we would have used to travel ended up helping us to buy a house. Houses are expensive little f@&kers (who knew?!) and that meant we had no spare cash for travelling.

I really struggled with that (Wandering Beeb is far more relaxed than me!) and a combination of ants in my pants, a travelling bug and the inability to relax unless I’m physically away from home meant that I scrimped and scraped to cobble together some cash to manage a couple of days away in Plitvice Lakes and Split in Croatia. So what if that meant that we had no flooring in the house (in a contest between flooring and travel, travel wins hands down, right?!).

All of the expenditure on the house has meant that we needed to change our outlook on travel this year. Local places needed to be seen through fresh eyes and we explored things closer to home. We wrote about our approaches to this here.

One of the things that has really helped us to do this is the ‘Manc_Wanderer’ account on Instagram (check it out if you are an Insta person). Seeing our home town through these amazing photos really forced us to look at our surroundings with fresh eyes.

So, this leads me to 2019. Our goals are a combination of looking a places close to home with fresh eyes, building in smaller weekend city breaks and (hopefully) getting away on a bigger trip later in the year. Yes those goals sound familiar. We set similar goals last year but 2018 had its own ideas. Our goals might not all happen; but that’s what goals are, things to aim for, not things set in stone. Ether way, it will be an interesting ride.

New Year, New Travels: Travel Goals

As we approach 2018, many blogs are looking back over their favourite posts and trips. It’s always nice to remind yourself of where you have been but we also thought that it would be useful to share some thoughts on where we are going.

Travelling can be an expensive business, but it doesn’t have to be if you plan properly! That being said, I’m not exactly what you would call a planner – I see a new place and that’s it, I get all excited and want to book it then and there. You could say my heart rules my head.

Wandering Beeb is the opposite. That’s not to say he doesn’t get excited, he does, but then he puts that to one side and works out the feasibility of us getting to our chosen destination. The two of us together cover both bases; aspirations and practicalities.

Take this year, for example. We will we probably be taking smaller trips in Europe, whilst we save up for a bigger (and further) trip later in 2018/19. This gives us two types of travelling goals. The first is a short term goal: short breaks in Europe which are comparatively inexpensive and can be booked at the last minute. For these, we will probably use search engines such as Skyscanner and Kayak. We won’t know where we are going until a couple of weeks before and we will probably be visiting for a couple of days at most.

Our second travel goal is the longer term one: a bigger (possibly two to three weeks) trip to somewhere far flung (possibly Asia). This takes time – both to save up and to plan where we want to see, as we will be looking at visiting multiple places and will need to know how to get about. For this trip, we will probably be using Trailfinders, as our past experiences with them have been excellent and they often have some insider knowledge to tailor-make a trip.

As well as these goals, we also want to try to build in more local hikes and trips to explore some more of the scenery on our doorstep. Even being out and about locally can go some way towards easing the itchy feet of those people infected by the travelling bug.

As always, in 2018 we will be sharing future adventures and past experiences with you lovely people. We also hope to bring in some new things to the blog – travelling tips and more responses to photo / inspiration challenges are some examples. Until then, a huge Happy New Year to all of our followers and happy travels for 2018!

Is there anything else you want to see on the blog? What could make it better? Let us know in the comments?!