VickyFlipFlopTravels

You’ve got to work with what you’ve got in this life and I’ve got this blog, a passion and a desire to help you travel better. To ‘push out of your comfort zone’ so people say and travel to places you might not have thought of in a way that suits your budget.

My recent life story

I’ve worked in travel since 2011, kind of doing the same thing as I do here, but for big travel brands, and then in 2013 I read Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Workweek Book and decided that me and him were the same (‘spirit animals’, so the Americans say).

From then on that seed of a location dependent lifestyle started sprouting in my mind.

📷

But I had a cool job and I had a boyfriend who I loved very much and was expecting to marry, and buy a house with and have babies and live happily ever after. It’d been 5 years – we’d been to mortgage meetings y’know – and he started acting strange.

A few months later he ended it, while on a dream holiday in California, Coachella and New York no less.

And a few months after that I found out, via Instagram, that yes, he had been cheating on me with a younger woman from work, who I knew. Someone had been watching too much Mad Men, with me. That 1 year celebratory photo of their names in hearts on Brighton Pier, posted about nine months after we split up, can’t be far from the one we did five years previously.

Eugh.

Anyway, heart stabbed, we must grow and learn from adversity and so I did. I moved out of his mum’s house where we’d been living, with his nan too (to save money for said house). I lasted another two months in London in a scabby flat to see out my work notice and off I went.

The world was my oyster and the rat race became a distant memory, as did he.

My travels

📷

I stayed at a raw food vegan camp in Mexico – getting up with sunrise to chant my chakras every morning – I skied in Japan, sailed round the islands of the Philippines, I skydived in New Zealand, I learned to surf in San Pancho, to drive a moped, and to talk with people around the world. I met up with friends at Sziget Festival in Budapest, travelled Lombardy in Italy with my best friend, saw the Taj Mahal, went Northern Lights hunting with my brother in Norway and drove the Pacific Coast Highway in a Ford Mustang – the exact route we’d followed the days after he’d dumped me, but at that point someone else was driving (my life – physically and metaphorically).

This second time round, just over a year later, navigating the twists and turns of the mountain side I felt empowered.

How the blog started

VickyFlipFlopTravels.com started as a place for me to practice the technical work I was learning during my time as a Content Editor at HostelBookers.com. When I travelled Europe for four months, the summer before I got the job, I kept a diary on my laptop every day. I had 120 posts to go live before I’d even had the thought to do a travel blog.

And so it began.

I found it all fascinating – Google Analytics! Links! Photography! Virality!

I still do.

As I went to meet ups I started to make friends and realise there was this whole movement out there. Some of the people I met at the start of my travel blogging career are among my best friends now. I’ve continued to meet awesome people at travel blogging conferences and events – some of which I speak to every day.

It’s great to have that support network.

I never imagined when I set this blog up that I’d be doing it by myself, full time and travelling the world as I go. I can’t believe that buying a domain name when I did has given me so many opportunities and joy.

Over the two, three, four, eight years I’ve been publishing it it’s developed into my space to share my thoughts on travel, on the people I meet and the adventures I have.

My blog is a way for me to be the test dummy to see how these travels work out and to hopefully inspire you, and show you, how to visit the same places I do and get as much fun and value as I do from the trips.

📷

Holidays

I love festivals, I love weekends away, I love holidays and I love the life I lead. I’d rather do it with friends but if I haven’t got any available to take I make sure to find some wherever I go.

– Am I Lonely, Travelling Solo?

A ‘holiday’ doesn’t have to be vegging out on the beach. It’s time to test the parameters, maybe head to a festival, learn a new skill or just do something different.

I ran this blog for two years alongside a full time job, and a 3-hour daily commute, I know what it’s like to work hard and to want to reap the benefits on your days off.

Travelling when I was younger

I was never someone who travelled much, until I hit 19 that is. I went to summer camp to work as a camp counselor and the experience changed my life. I went back again the next year.

I can’t imagine how different my life would be if I hadn’t gone for it. This was the catalyst for travel in my life.

Then I travelled Australia (on a credit card). I taught English in Madrid, I went to Ibiza (five times), I popped into Mexico and then my brother went travelling for two years and I had a thirst to do the same.

Travelled Europe

I was focused on my much-wanted journalism career though and travel ended up taking a back seat while I worked my ass off in London. It wasn’t until I was made redundant in the financial crisis, and my ex hated his job, that we decided to take the plunge and travel for that four months round Europe. Sometimes it’s when life gets a bit s**t, that it’s about to get a whole lot better.

In my experience anyway.

Travelling at these key times in my life has been such a tonic for me. Having the excitement of an open world ahead of me has been a distraction and a purpose. Travel is a great way to get some perspective on life and it’s having these new experiences that opens the mind to what could be possible in life.

That’s why I’m interested in showing people how they can have more interesting, adventurous and rewarding holidays.

Love Festivals

I’ve been going to festivals since I was 16 years old – when I was just a terrified kid from the countryside too scared to go to the toilet at Reading Festival in case someone tipped it over and set fire to it, as they were. For many reasons I’ve stuck by the festivals and now love including a few cultural and music ones into my yearly calendar.

I’ve been lucky enough to be invited to Bestival, to Oktoberfest, to Tomatina, the Bardolino Wine Festival and Bilbao BBK, among many others. I’ve also gone stateside with a trip to Coachella and an amazing two weeks at SXSW too.

Being a Digital Nomad

By not sitting back and letting bad points in life overtake me, but grabbing them and using them as an opportunity I now live a crazy life where I pretty much do what I want every day.

I’ve travelled to 77 countries on 6 continents and had some incredible times along the way.

Of course being by myself there have been some scary and isolated times along the way, times when I question this life I’ve carved for myself. It’s not easy being on the go all the time – it’s not even doing something different every day, everything is different in a day – but as soon as I settle for more than a few days I’m ready to go again.

Although, I did move back to England a few years ago, and bought a house in Southsea, on the south coast. Now I travel every month to somewhere new, and have spent quite a bit of time just travelling around England too.

I’m addicted to travel

I don’t have rich parents financing my life, I haven’t won the lottery and I don’t have a sugar daddy – all my travels are either paid by me or I’ve been invited on press trips which are a direct consequence of my hard work. I earn enough from my projects and clients to finance my life, and pay for my house myself too.

If you travel wisely, and make travel priority, then there are definitely ways that you can introduce a few more holidays into your life. I want to help show you how.

My travel blog

I love how there’s so much to learn, play with and do in the world of blogging. It’s changed a lot in the eight years I’ve been a travel blogger, but it’s fun to keep up with the times, and to see how other bloggers are adapting too.

More than 5 million people have read my blog over the years – and even the President of Estonia shared a post on his page. I’ve won ‘best blogger’ accolades from companies I was once desperate to work for, now they come asking me to write articles for them, while my long lost CV rots somewhere in their inbox circa 2010.

I get to partner with awesome brands, have been invited on trips I wouldn’t have even had the knowledge or imagination to comprehend just a few years ago and have made some awesome friends in the travel industry since the day I started.

Travel has totally changed my life, my belief in myself and made me believe that so much can be possible if you just have the right mindset and discipline.

I created vickyflipfloptravels.com as a place for me to learn about blogging, travel and to connect with other travellers, but it’s now a resource for that with my Travel Blogger High series, my travel advice section, and my list of my favourite UK-based travel bloggers.

All of which I’ve had the pleasure to meet.

My blog, in short

Having the life you knew and thought you were in for pulled out from under your feet doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Perspective and attitude are the key to happiness.

If you want something, go for it with everything you have but don’t give up the day job until the time is right.

Festivals are awesome and I want to see them all.

There’s a huge world out there, channel that curiosity and tenacity and go explore!