Tag: Scotland

Slow and steady, what’s that?

Nearly 9 years ago I was hired for my dream job. It involved itinerary planning for UK and European travel. As I had been creating itineraries for myself for over 7 years prior to this I had the skills needed to get a good head start. The job gave me the opportunity to expand on this and introduced me to places I’d not yet been to. At times I felt I could walk around cities like Rome and Paris blind and still know what was around me. It was methodical. Fast paced. Very detailed and specific work. Since leaving the job behind and coming to terms with living with anxiety, I’ve come to accept my need for itineraries when travelling. It means there are no hidden surprises and I can relax along the way. I won’t get lost because I’ve mapped out the route. I’ll have the postcode for the hidden car parks. Hotels are booked in advance so I can keep an eye on the budget. Food stops and supplies are planned so I don’t get stuck with a manky sandwich and a half rotten apple (this happened to Mr W, not me!). 

In the last couple of years Framework Travel has highlighted these skills to other people. I’ve created a huge number of New York itineraries for clients as well as trips to Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and London. In a strange way, by creating an itinerary I’m travelling in my mind’s eye. I’m walking the cobbled streets of Rome and watching the sun set over the Seine in Paris. It’s actually amazing to hear back how much my planning can help other people. 

Everything I’ve ever planned has been fast paced. 18 hour days in New York. A 72 hour itinerary in Paris squeezed into 1 day. 6 days in Italy to see 3 cities. Every single detail is researched and cut and pasted together with minute details slotted in. 

And then there’s Scotland. 

When I used to plan a weeks trip in London for 30 American students it would roughly be 6-7 pages long. This would include transfers, hotel details and addresses for places like the Tower of London and The British Museum. With our NC500 trip, the itinerary for 16 days is currently at 30 pages. THIRTY. The transfers are: car. But there are 14 hotels all with different check in details. And addresses for places to visit are more grid reference based than actual postcodes. It is so strange. And exciting! 

There will be places we visit on this big tour that have no ‘specific location’. It’s more a stream, or in some cases, a trickle of information found in the depths of the internet. Park at ‘such n such’  layby, 200 metres from ‘this’ pub, walk west for 1 mile, veer left at the fork in the path… and it goes on. We may not be able to rely on our phones due to phone reception and the weather is going to change from one minute to the next. And for the first time in my life, I can’t plan everything. There will be moments technology will fail us. There will be times the weather will test us, this is no beach holiday (although, ha, there are a few we will visit, dressed in jumpers and hiking boots). The food will be dried and revived by hot water from our car kettle. And there will be one, maybe two, occasions where my face will be scrubbed up for a nice meal on an actual plate. This is not going to be a vacation to relax. This is going to be a journey to explore, find and return back to basics. Well, as basic as it can get with an itinerary. 

So far it has taken 5 months of planning, researching and slotting this trip together and the more it builds the more my excitement grows and my anxiety weakens. For the first time I don’t know what to expect and that’s the exciting part. This isn’t the Colosseum in Rome, where you can stand and nod that all knowing yes, it matches the image you’ve transferred from the internet, magazines and tv shows to your travel bank in your brain. Scotland is rural. It changes every day. Different sunlights, seasons and vegetation. But it’s something bigger than what you see. That’s why since our first hiking trip in 2020, my travel mind has changed so vastly. It’s the effect hiking has on you. The setting out to new pastures, the long slogs up hills, the speedy trails down the other side and the beautiful end point. Even if it’s not beautiful, you have reached your destination and made yourself proud! No car, no taxi, just you and your feet. 

One of the more enlightening aspects of this planning stage is how much slower it is. As I mentioned, there aren’t websites based on some of the walks and it’s just the ‘word of mouth’ I can track down online. I’ve stumbled upon some snags here and there where my fast-paced style does not suit the lifestyle of the Scottish businesses. When trying to reach someone about some axe-throwing, it took two emails and a phone call. Spread out over 3 weeks. In London, you’d have an answer within an hour. It’s not that Scotland doesn’t want the business or tourists, but they seem to take it all at a slower pace. I may have realised to avoid stumbling, I just needed to slow down. Take it steady.

This trip is so much more than the end destination, hell it needs to be with over 500 miles to cover, it’s about the journey. Yes, there will be an itinerary. We still need hotel information and addresses, but when it comes to activities and the driving, it’s more about looking around than ahead. I’m starting to wonder whether my anxieties will be left at home. And whether my mind can finally have its deep breath. Slow and steady. 

Sustainability on a budget

Covid changed a lot. That is a fact. It disrupted every single life around the world. It’ll be a saga that is told for decades to come. 

I have touched upon how life changed for us in previous blogs, check out ‘Changes to how we saw the world’ and ‘A hop, skip and a fracture’ to learn more. It has changed how we view money, travel and single use purchases. It’s surprising to think that they all go hand in hand. So with that in mind, welcome to,

Sustainability on a budget! 

*play the riotous jingle from our sponsors (there are no sponsors)*

Our biggest trip this year will be 16 days travelling from Essex, up to Inverness, over the top of Scotland, following the NC500, pausing in the Isle of Skye and heading down to the Lake District. It’s a lot of mileage to consider and plan ahead for. It’s a lot of everything. 

Food. 

Accommodation

Rubbish. 

Luggage.

We knew early on that we didn’t want this trip to cost the earth. So, from the moment I started planning the route, our stops were allocated due to low cost accommodation. Luckily enough the NC500 takes you through so many small and remote places that a cheap bed for the night wasn’t too hard to come by. There are places I’ve booked in the Isle of Skye and Fort William that have cost almost double our £40-£50 a night budget, but this is to be expected in the more ‘touristy’ areas. Fort William itself has many shops, the popular ‘Harry Potter’ steam railway and is the gateway to Ben Nevis, the Uk’s highest mountain. So it is understandable that our hotel here is costing £80 for the night. It’s an understanding I’ve talked myself round to. Especially as it’s a room with bunk beds! Although it does have a private bathroom, which the diva that lives in me is so grateful for. Other hotels where cheaper do have shared bathrooms and as someone who doesn’t pee in public bathrooms, I’m definitely going all out for this trip! If I remember correctly there are 2-3 hotels on the trip where we won’t share a bed but the room will be private. For the sake of one night, we will survive the separation. Ha! I think after our full days of driving, hiking and exploring, we’ll want nothing more than our own bed, covers and comfort. All hail a return to separate marital beds. I’ve found that when trying to save money, it’s easier to look for hotels that don’t include breakfast, in fact there are only 3 hotels on our entire trip that offer breakfast to be included. One of those hotels is in the Lake District and was booked using a voucher and is our only luxury accommodation on the trip. When it comes to the accommodations we have booked it’s not easy to see how they are sustainable. When one thinks of sustainability it’s often of eco-hotels and the like. However in regards to sustainability and our hotels, it is more of a need to sustain a budget. This budget is important to us, because it means for the first time, travelling in the UK can cost as little as travelling abroad. Too often have we booked a trip to Spain for a week because it is almost one third of the price of a week in Cornwall. This is one of the huge changes covid has brought about. Our need to stay in the UK, but not pay out of the proverbial arse to do so. So far our budget for 16 days in the UK, is at £1086. 92. We have more food to buy, so this amount will increase, but it does include the more expensive items such as the bladder bags and portable kettle. Something that is really important to us this year is stretching the almighty pound coin. It was important when we started planning the trip in December 2021, and we find now in May 2022 it is even more crucial. The cost of living has increased enormously. So if we can minimise the output in terms of vacationing in the UK and learn more about living sustainably in the process I’d call that a win-win situation. 

One of the biggest budget saving hacks I can share with you, is to make your money work harder for you. Something I’ve been doing for years is using our Tesco clubcard points to book our hotels. It is possible to triple up your points in order to do this. It’s easy to do online and I’ve found plenty of hotels that take the vouchers. It means for every £5 of vouchers you potentially have £15 towards a hotel booking. It takes some getting used to as taxes and vat aren’t covered by vouchers, but ultimately it gives you a huge saving! For instance, the hotel I have booked in Fort William cost £85 for the night. I used a £60 voucher and paid £25 cash. However the vouchers I used were originally worth £20. So that means I’m paying £45 for the room, which means a saving of £40! BUT, if you really want to push the thinking, you did nothing but buy your food shop to gain these points, they take time to build, but don’t waste them on your food shop. Boost them! Even a small amount can be boosted and buy you a great dinner at a restaurant along the way. We’ve exhausted our vouchers as of January this year, however by the time we head to Scotland we may have enough for a cheeky pub meal. Not a pot noodle in sight! All in all, we have used £195 of vouchers for this trip, which has cost us £65, that is an enormous saving of £130. Not too shabby eh. And honestly we haven’t compromised on hotels. They are budget, but you do your research. Clean, not a shed and towels included. On this trip, I’ll be happy for a bed and 10 hours out of the car! It may seem complicated, but I assure you it’s easy and it’ll make the trip you take that bit better when you’ve chopped a budget clean in half. 

Mr W and I have spoken for hours on the best way of tackling a budget when it comes to the food for this trip. To add a challenge into the mix, we want to buy food that we can take with us, that won’t spoil and has recyclable, and therefore sustainable, packaging. 

As discussed in ‘Out of body experience number 342’ we’ve decided to take tinned food such as curries and stews to give us the much needed protein and vegetables we need to consume to keep our energy levels up. The best part being that the tin can and paper label are all recyclable. Along with these food items, we have stocked up on packet soups and breakfast oats. All with sustainable packaging. We hope that every few days we’ll be able to buy loose fruit too. To suit eating these packaged foods on the road, we’ve bought a small kettle that can run off of the car’s electric supply. We are lucky to have a hybrid SUV that will turn into a car/kitchen for the trip. We’ve invested in large, lightweight soup mugs for our car meals, have reusable cutlery and have kept two 5 litre bottles to reuse on the trip for water. These water ‘reserves’ will help us fill our bladder backpacks for our long hikes and our metal water bottles for the shorter ones. It would be easy to buy a huge stock of 500ml water bottles to take on the trip, but we’ve become accustomed to using our metal and 5L bottles in order to use less plastic and save a lot of money! In fact, the only other drinks we’ll be taking on our trip are a small variety of canned drinks when water just won’t cut it. Again, I like to think that the sugary treats will taste better when I know the can will be recycled. I plan to send out emails to our accommodations and ask of their recycling methods, as this is important to us and also in regards to our eating habits on the trip. It may come to me finding recycle points in some of the larger towns, so our efforts to be as sustainable as possible does not fall at the second hurdle of the mixed hotel rubbish bin. 

Something I’ve found really useful, and I’ll admit really enjoyable about this food challenge, is the need to organise the food properly. After a long day of hiking and driving, we will find the need to grab food quickly and therefore easily. Therein comes the large ziplock bags. I have not bought these bags rather been sent them as packaging for clothing purchases. When something like these cannot be recycled, it feels good to use it again and again to prevent it becoming a single use item. In the past these bags have been used to hold dirty washing and toiletries. I have quite the collection! Therefore these will be introduced into the food organisation plan for this trip and make for easy grab bags for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

They will also come in exceptionally handy again for dirty clothes. With the amount of walking and possibly rain we’ll encounter, there will be a great need to separate clean and dirty items. As we plan to take all of our food, the space in the car will be limited when it comes to clothing. So the plan is to pack smart and also to stop at least once at a laundrette. It isn’t ideal. But it means our budget is more sustainable food wise and the food is in sustainable packaging. The only packaging problem I have right now is the milk. It’s impossible to take regular milk on the trip as we won’t have a way of keeping it cool. But this is why I thought of the single serving milks you’ll often find in hotel rooms. The tiny ones that Mr W needs 3 of for his coffee. These are readily available to bulk buy online and I’m happy to have found last night that the actual pot is recyclable. However the lid is not. So if you have any suggestions (other than creamer) I’d love to hear them!

A huge problem we’ve been dealing with at home recently is the amount of bottles we recycle from the bathroom. I’ve been trying out some shampoo bars and Mr W has gone on step further and has a 2-1 shampoo/conditioner bar. So far there have been no complaints, although I’d like to try others due to the after effects and the health of my hair, but there are so many companies that offer these bars with sustainable packaging that I’m sure we’ll find the right ones soon! Team those up with shower gel and soap bars and I’m confident for the environment friendly squeaky clean travellers making their way along the NC500.

However, it is here I will share with you the guilty pleasure I have found in the past. And that is… hotel toiletries! We have a fair few half used hotel toiletry bottles from our travels, which we knew would be thrown out and wasted, that we have bought home and put in a box to use at other times. Now is that time. It is not desirable, considering the implications of plastic and its often found unrecyclable properties. However, I like to think as this was going to end up in the bin when we used it the first time, we are not wasting the rest of the product and moving towards a more sustainable practice of soap bars in the future. Speaking of which, we plan to keep these in mesh bags so the product dries quicker and therefore doesn’t melt away on the side of a sink and we don’t find our money literally washing away down the drain. 

The planning of any holiday can be hard. Learning about a new place, what it has to offer and what works where and when on an itinerary. Adding all of the above into the mix has genuinely been so interesting. I have enjoyed the challenge. I find the closer we get to the trip I am more thankful for the new practices we’ve developed than the experience itself. Sustainable travel is as hard as you make it. And what is sustainable travel really? Is it leaving only footprints? Is it wearing your pants for 4 days in a row? Front, back, inside out and back to front again. Or is it finding sustainable practices that give your mind a cleaner view? That makes your conscience smile. Hiking. New experiences. New places. Morning sprints into the coldest of seas. Driving for 3 hours watching the mountains grow closer and then further away in the rear-view mirror. Maybe it’s the rewards of hiking the path of a waterfall that feels so rewarding. Maybe it’s the gratification our souls need after the last few years of struggling. It’s the rewards of giving something back. Keeping the air cleaner and the seas free from plastic. It’s stopping on a dirt road in the rain, sitting in the boot of our car, tailgate up and watching the world go by. The world that has sustained us. 

Travel needs to be more than jetting off and spending money. It needs to be more than the rubbish we produce and buy. It needs to be a way of sustaining the soul. 

Auto-travel-mode. Planning the NC500.

A quick one today giving an update on the NC500 in a little under 5 months. Time is flying!

So, I spent the better part of 2 weeks in January mapping out our trip. We’ll be doing the trip anti-clockwise, which means joining the circuit in Inverness. There are a few reasons we chose to do it this way. 

  • When we spent two days in Edinburgh last year, it rained the entire day we were in the city centre. This meant our plan to climb Arthur’s seat was cancelled. We both don’t mind a bit of rain, but it had brought along a thick mist which meant we wouldn’t have a view of anything but from the top! Ironically, it was the only thing we both card most about on the actual day. So we plan to stop in Edinburgh really early on our way up to the Cairngorms and finally head up this major tourist hotspot. 
  • We’ve been given a lovely two night stay and have chosen the Lake District to do this in. It also means we’ll be staying in a lovely hotel for our 4th wedding anniversary and as we have really crunched the budget for this trip accommodation wise, it means on our anniversary we can really relax and unwind in complete and utter comfort!
  • Both of the above reasons, don’t rely too much on starting in Inverness and ending in the Lake District, however when you look at how the scenery changes from the East to West coast of the Scottish Highlands you will see how much more mountainous and rugged it gets. For us, we decided we wanted to start slowly with the sloping coastal roads of Inverness, Wick and John O’Groats before heading up and over and then down the dramatic landscape of the West. 

Where my research has taken the trip is down through Ullapool and then onto the Isle of Skye, which in itself looks absolutely phenomenal! I predict that we’ll be heading back to Scotland within a few short years because of how much there is to see and do! We managed to collate our research early on and had three word documents on what we wanted to see and do. 

Planning this all out, meant laying it all out in a kind of mapped loop, the amount of stops was unbelievable and it became apparent very quickly that our 16 day trip would not be long enough. So we made the hard decisions on what to take out and it has left us with another two week trip for sure in the future. 

Something you ought to know about how I travel. Once I’m there I don’t know when to stop. I go into auto-travel-mode. My body is tired. My mind is wired. And I should stop. But the thing is I am my freest when I travel. Seeing, doing, exploring. I was probably a bird in my former life. Never stopping. Always moving. In my nest, I’m still and calm. And then I’m in flight. Soaring and not letting my tired wings rule my heart. 

In the beginning process of planning this trip, Mr W, shared his concerns of us jamming too much in and wondering if we may have to ‘delete’ stuff as we go along. The concerns over the roads and how long it takes to get from point A to B are real! The roads are winding, often single-laned and there are cattle to barter with for space. The plan itself accounts for almost 30/40% more time on the road between locations to allow for this. And as we have said all along, this trip’s main aim is to drive the NC500. To be a part of that growing crowd that experiences Scotlands now not so hidden gem. Not what we see and do. That’s not to say that we won’t be seeing and doing a lot of stuff, because boy will we! 

I remember the trip Mr W and I took to New York, his first, my fourth. It was monumental before we even arrived in the city due to the fact it is, and was, my favourite place in the entire world. I was hoping to show him everything that was so great about the city and see him coming away from it loving it as much as me. I’m not saying it was a dealbreaker in our relationship, but a small part of me was so nervous that my boyfriend wouldn’t want to return and I would have a giant NY shaped hole in my heart. Turns out I left NY as his fiancee and with him loving the city too! Win, win. During a walk on the highline, Mr W asked me what the plans for the rest of the day were, and when told he remarked there was no way we could manage it all with the amount of hours left in our day. I remember stopping, sitting, looking down at W17th Street and crying. He didn’t understand me. I want to keep going. I want to see everything. I don’t want to stop. And my now fiance was unhappy with how I did things. Crushed! 

It’s only now I realise how much I do cram into these trips. And how hard it must be for someone who loves me to keep going for my sake but feel exhausted at the same time. Their inner voice is screaming for them to stop, while mine is screaming keep going! I think my voice is just so scared that another chance may not come up. Who knows what tomorrow may bring. It’s the fear of not going back. Not having another chance. Missing something. Having unfinished business.

We’ve done a lot of travelling since that life changing trip to New York and we have grown as a couple and our travel habits have vastly changed. This is enormously down to the 2020/2021 lockdowns and how we now view city breaks vs hiking trips. I know one day we will get back to the city breaks and stomping those pavements but for now the mountain roads are calling!

The more I see online and each little researching moment I have throws more and more at this trip, and most of it doesn’t stick due to timing but then some does. The days will be early, which is so out of my comfort zone and there will also be a lot of trust placed in me, eep, but I’m sure we’ll love every minute. Mr W will still have his concerns, as will I, but together we’ll be fine. We compliment each other with our differences. That’s what I hear anyway!

**Update, we continue to try out the canned foods for our roadside dinners, Mr W tried the spaghetti rings and sausages, said it wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t sold. I had the chicken curry which was more fiery than I thought it would be. Both of us were pleasantly surprised. The quest continues!**

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Out of body experience number 342

Usually these happen in my sleep when I have the weirdest dreams. But oh no no. Not today. We have a night-time routine, the same as anyone else really. Lock the doors. Check. Close the blinds. Check. Teeth. Cats in. Evening pee. Check. Check. Check. 

Tonight as I did my sweep of the kitchen I could not help but crack myself up! Today I took in a shopping order and we bought some bits to try for our Scotland trip. As mentioned on previous blogs, we are hoping to squeeze the mighty budget of a 16 day trip to it’s suffocating point, and (!) I absolutely want to be as sustainable as possible. It’s become an obsession. 

At first we planned on living off of noodles, the potted kind, as they’re easily recycled however on a road trip Mr W and I got to talking. We do our best talking on the road. It was on a road trip in 2020, where we put the Scotland trip into motion! Don’tcha know! Anywho, we decided that travelling over a 1000 miles and walking upwards of 10-15 miles a day warranted more sustenance for our bodies so we got thinking about what else we could consume that was nutritious. As the evenings stay lighter and the days get warmer I have been craving fresh and crunchy salads. Not only is it good for the soul it does fight the PCOS that ravages my body! So win win! Oh the digression tonight is real. So we got to talking about buying some salad etc and whether we could get tinned sweetcorn and tuna to add to these salads on the road so we get a real hit of super healthy tasty foods. And then it hit us, tinned food. Metal cans. Recycling. Check! Paper labels. Recycling. Check! So we had a look online and found an array of foods in a can. Mr W is trying some different fishes in sauces, things like mackerel in a spicy tomato sauce, that he can whack on a salad while I dry heave outside. And I’ve gone all 80s retro and found some stews, and ravioli and currys in a can! I mean we’ll have to eat them cold but honestly how long would they stay warm in Scotland anyway. 

I’m made up! We need to wheedle out the good from the bad, and tonight’s delicacy was spaghetti bolognese for me, poured into a bowl. I’m not an animal. And a lamb stew for Mr W. Both got a thumbs up. So the trial will continue over the coming weeks. I have a feeling it’ll make a big difference to the trip having actual food! So team that up with the odd pot noodle and salad, we’ll be raring to go! 

So, the out of body experience came, when out of the corner of my eye I saw all these cans sitting on the countertop. Often I’ll wonder what would happen if I was getting out of the shower and a burglar was to just be there. The doors are locked, no windows open, I’m just a stupidly imaginative person who must think burglars can just pass through a keyhole. Now I’ve just wondered what if someone broke in, and thought wow, that’s a lot of cans, are these guys doomsdayers? Have they got a secret bunker, and why aren’t the cans inside the bunker? Then the image of this burglar, let’s call him Barry for shizz and giggles, wanders round in the semi dark, checking all the door frames for hidden latches to the secret doomsday bunker. 

Sorry Bazza, we’re doing an experiment, mate. Nothing more nothing less. Closest we’ve got to a secret bunker is… 

Feedback will continue on the cans! Watch this space.