My inspiration to travel definitely came from my parents. I was born in 1964 and my parents were keen ‘caravaners’ and took their young family on adventurous trips on the continent for 3 weeks every September. It took us quite a few days to get to our destination which was usually Italy but sometimes Spain and there were plenty of adventures on the way – remember this was the 1960’s and not many people could speak English so fluently as they do today, there were hard borders between all the countries and very few ‘tourists’ on the roads. I was lucky enough to go on holidays like these every year from being a baby and I’m sure it instilled my love of travelling.

After leaving school I applied for a job as a travel agent, thinking this would help fund my travels. It wasn’t to be and I ended up working in the civil service for the next few years. My sister did get a job in travel and we holidayed together or with my friends to some wonderful far flung places, such as St Lucia, Russia, Florida and Barbados. Holidays weren’t enough to quench my thirst for travelling at the time and I left the civil service to work as a nanny in Athens and working in restaurants in the Greek islands for a while. My love and working knowledge of Greece helped me to get a role as a travel representative which was the perfect job for me. I worked all summer in a place I loved and saved my money to go travelling during the winter months. I spent wonderful times travelling in Europe and further afield to Hong Kong, India, China and Australia on my own.

During my third year in Greece I met Martin (my future husband), and we travelled together in the winter to Hong Kong and Australia. We decided not to return to our travel jobs and we worked and saved money in Sydney to travel around Australia in a campervan. We then left Australia and flew to Bali, travelling across the whole of the Indonesian islands of Lombok, Flores, Komodo, Java and Sumatra, then across Malaysia and Thailand. Eighteen months later we returned home.

Settling back into life back home as a couple our love of travel continued with fabulous holidays to Sri Lanka, Equador and of course Greece. Getting married and having children meant our holidays were more ‘child friendly’ for a few years, travelling to Menorca, Portugal and Majorca, although it wasn’t long before we started to take them further afield, to Turkey, to Greece, to Egypt and to Morocco. As the children have grown up they are already being inspired to travel and have travelled extensively with us, to New York, on a fabulous road trip to Western USA, to Peru, to Costa Rica, to Mexico, to Cuba, to South Africa, to Vietnam and Cambodia, to Kerala in India, the Philippines and to Myanmar.

As we run a business our time to travel is restricted and we’re not keen on tours although granted they can help you fit a lot in a short period of time. But my teenage children are still travelling with us so I have to be as cost efficient as possible which means my own itineraries, my own research and putting together my own packages. It’s sometimes a challenge and sometimes there’s been little difference in cost to getting a local agent in country to put the package together. So here I share our fantastic experiences and my itineraries, with our suggestions and ideas which will hopefully help you get started to do more of your own research. I always read forums on Lonely Planet and Trip Advisor to see what other people have done and find out the best way to travel between places and I always travel with Lonely Planet, so I hope some of our travels will help you too!

Happy travelling!

Helen