Van tour around New Zealand’s North Island – day five

We woke up on the morning of our fifth day hooning around the North Island at a Freedom Camping spot at the beginning of the Manawatu Gorge. It was still. It was peaceful. It was a tad chilly but we just enjoyed our surroundings. Our morning activity was to head to Palmerston North - a …

Van tour around New Zealand’s North Island – day three and day four

We pick up this post on day three of our North Island road trip in our rented camper van. Day three sees us wake up in Tologa Bay and cruise down the East Coast towards Gisborne where we have a spot of drinking and eating. Not quite tasting everything New Zealand can serve on a …

Van tour around New Zealand’s North Island – day one and two

Right at the end of winter we hit the road in our rented Apollo Euro Tourer camper van (built off a 2019 Sprinter van) to your around the North Island of New Zealand. We left Auckland we headed down toward the Bay of Plenty, choosing to stay the night on the stunning Ōhope Beach - …

So… we started a YouTube channel

I reckon if I were to clock our YouTube viewing hours in 2020, it would easily be higher than the previous three years combined. That global pandemic has seen us react really differently to travel and we started our first lockdown with travel videos which quickly morphed into van life videos. In preparation for building …

Van Life for life?

2020 sees many of us rethinking how we travel or in fact, how we live. And we are no exception. During our weeks of lock down we grappled with the reality of saying goodbye to international travel, notably our long awaited month-long trip through Central America. In the grand scheme of things not being able …

Where I’ve been and where to next…

There is this neat new feature on AirNZ - the travel mapper. You can map where you've been and it gives some ideas about where to go next (via AirNZ, obviously). I love seeing where I've been and figure out where to next. Over my summer holiday before heading back to work, I'm keen to …

Rome – a classics nerd’s top 10

Rome is where my heart lies, when I go there I feel as my soul sings. Why? As a classics scholar it is the place that brings together almost all of my favourite sites and museums. Here I can imagine that I'm back in the age of the first emperor Augustus and that at any …

“If adventures do not befall a lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad” – European Itinerary 2018

Jane Austen isn't always the person I think of when I consider adventurous travel. Yet this quote from Austen's Northanger Abbey (which I last read in my first year of university) resonates with me so deeply. Why do I travel? Why do I yearn to leave the shores of Aotearoa New Zealand to seek adventures …

Being adventurous: Five new things on our upcoming Europe trip

We're heading to Europe this week. The nature of our trip means that we are revisiting some cities that we've been too before. To keep things fresh and exciting, here are five things new to us this time. Lisbon Never been to Portugal 🇵🇹. We have two nights here. I'm looking forward to the nightlife …

Air BnB – why wouldn’t you?

I've just wrapped up booking all of the accommodation for our month long trip to Europe. All bar one night is booked through Air BnB. And I'm chuffed. Not only do we have more space and greater useful amenities compared to a hotel (yip, I'm talking the all important coffee maker and washing machine) as …