Hello World: Meet the SoloTravelless

Once upon time, there was a small town girl stuck in a pandemic spontaneously booking herself onto a wild camping weekend to escape the continuous flow of rejection letters grinding down her confidence and leaving her happy nature in tatters.

Two weeks later, she found herself sitting on a rock watching the sun set in the midst of the Lake District, wearing dorky zipper pants, something she owned but never thought she’d actually use, drying her lake water dipped hair deliberating when might be the best time to figure out the toilet situation. Amongst those terribly important considerations, she also had a little aha moment about life and such… and the rest was history…

Outdoor Epiphany

Like for most of us, my fellow travellers, 2020 was quite a pickle for me with work nowhere to be found and the usual coping mechanism unavailable. When down and uninspired, packing a bag and going off to explore new places is usually my way of resetting the system and getting a little confidence boost.

Meeting new people, finding yourself in new environments, experiencing random encounters and unexpected kindness, are the best cure for a broken spirit I’d say. Having that option taken away when you most need it, was definitely quite a challenge which led me to becoming a wild camper in the Lake District, an adventure showing me that you don’t have to go far to experience special moments and shift your way of thinking.

While being in the outdoors is often itself a good way of refreshing the mind — as Nietzsche said, ‘All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking’ — being 100% self-sufficient, carrying everything you need and being able to just pitch up your tent when ready to settle down, was such a liberating experience reminding me of some of the happiest times in my life.

That weekend gave me the confidence boost I desperately needed. It allowed me to finally feel in charge of my life again while dusting off that good old ‘live in the moment’-concept. Wanting to capture such feeling for myself as well as other travellers, I ended up writing a little wild camping feature for the event host to share my story and possibly inspire others, unknowingly making my first step into the SoloTravelless direction.

The Journalist in Me

Putting such experience into words made me realise how much I missed writing, a field I studied and worked in before moving into the better paying corporate world with the intention to return to writing again one day, a day that never came, until now.

Once the camping story was finished, I went back to a travel feature I started about seven years ago when taking a travel writing course in London, a very insightful but yet intimidating experience as I was surrounded by great writers with their very own take on things, something I always felt I lacked.

Doing it just for myself this time around, ideas and words came easily along with a big smile while reminiscing about my nightly adventure in Shetland, a travel memory which I decided to pass on to the Shetland crew as well as my travel writing instructor in case he’d like to offer some notes in review of a now finished product. A bit of a long shot given the fact that seven years had passed, but I received answers right away, from both, having equally enjoyed the story and feedback even if delayed. Their instant reaction gave me back confidence in my writing skills and reminded me of what I loved most about being a journalist.

When writing for newspapers and magazines, my favourite part was hearing from interviewees getting positive reactions once their story was published. One of my all-time favourites was about a bakery opening in Houston (which you can find here), featuring two lovely people pursuing what they’re passionate about and simply enjoying making other people happy.

Feature stories became my speciality because I loved shining a light on such inspiring individuals being in awe of their strength and achievements in often less than ideal conditions. While listening to and then telling their stories, it felt like their optimism and happiness was rubbing off on me, something I’m hoping to do as well by finally putting my very own stories into writing.

More Can Go Right Than Wrong

Why didn’t I do this earlier? Well, I’ve been playing around with travel blog ideas for years but could never find the right angle. There were countless drafts I kept discarding after thinking them through and basically talking myself out of it; something that is very unlike me usually being the instigator who’d be asking light-heartedly, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ — a motto that got me out wild camping once, and then again. The second time, I ventured along the North Downs Way, which made my special angle rather obvious being the only woman on those trails with a mission and a massive backpack.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been solo travelling my way around the world, my backpack being my best friend. Learning how to wild camp took that gypsy lifestyle to the next level. It allowed me to take a timeout when needed, led me along the North Downs, and then over to Peacehaven where a stroll along the waterfront provided final inspiration embodied in below picture — whoever grabbed one of the chalky stones that day to capture their thoughts, thank you!

We might be forced to ‘travel less’ these days but you don’t really have to go far to get that travel-fix, that detox from the daily grind, that timeout from the pandemic rollercoaster. There’s so much to explore and to love about the places we live in, we just need to get out there and look for it.

…And that’s how the website was born:

‘Love where you live!’

Having the name and concept sorted, and hopefully sufficiently explained to you guys, it’s time to make it happen and put all those wonderful actions into useful and entertaining words.

Being an old school journalist mainly dealing with hard copy publications, something you will probably notice in my first posts, it might take me a few tries to tame the SEO plugin that’s currently shouting at me — that’s a Search Engine Optimisation tool by the way, for all the other non-bloggers out there. It’s basically telling me that my style of writing is not necessarily suitable for the internet. After all, run-on-sentences are another speciality of mine, so thanks for making it that far and not running off just yet.

Adjusting my style should be doable, rejoining the daunting world of social media, that’s a different story. But as a wise man and Peacehaven-based friend of mine supportively said, ‘there’s more that can go right than wrong.’ So, let’s try this together and join me on my online journey as I rediscover my love for writing as well as the outdoors! Let’s ‘solotravel less’!!

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