Travel Blog #1
Embarking on an overseas adventure
Traveling overseas is an exciting adventure that opens a world of new experiences, cultures, and memories. As we step into 2025, our reasons for traveling are personal and deeply rooted in our joint desire to experience different cultures, understand where we come from and explore the natural world through photography. Easy, you might say, but it has taken Serena and I many years of soul searching and planning to be here now. Where is here – a hotel in Auckland less than 48 hrs from the first leg of our one-way flight to Rome.
Working out where we wanted to go
Before embarking on our journey, thorough research is essential to ensure a smooth and enjoyable trip. Here are some tips for conducting effective travel research:
1. Family & general history: For Serena, like many Kiwis born in New Zealand, links go back to the UK and Europe, so joining Ancestry.com and exploring family trees became invaluable. Fascinatingly many of Serena’s links were routed in Cornwall so seemed a great place to start, with her interests in archaeology, architecture and general history.
2. Where the wildlife is: Fortunately, there is a lot of material available online these days on what animals and birds can be seen where and when. To make life “easier”, I will be trying to capture images of red squirrels, puffins, choughs, eagles, owls, otters, Red Deer and anything else I manage will be a bonus. Ha, ha ha – setting my sights too high – probably, but if you don’t try you fail, right?
You’ll be able to see how well we do via my Instagram account (@robscotcher_photography).
We have our Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and National Trust memberships, and we will be exploring plenty of those UK sites.
3. Places neither of us have been to: It was easy to create a list of places we hadn’t been. What was hard was trimming the list to places to fit 1, 2 and 5, then it was using the budget to determine where else we could go. First on the list was Morrocco not just because of Casablanca “You must remember this”, but the call of the Sahara. Then there is Scotland, 35+ years I lived in the UK, and I visited Scotland (Glasgow for one day) – well we are correcting that wrong on this trip.
4. Places one of us knows: Serena has extensive experience of Italy, but I have never been (I spent my time visiting Portugal and Spain instead), and I want to see the history and art of one of the ancient world’s greatest societies. Ireland, I have spent many months visiting and working in both Northern Ireland and Eire and a trip to the United Kingdom without an extended stay in the emerald isle for me would be like bangers without the mash, fish without the chips and a Cornish tea without the clotted cream. Serena is particularly looking forward to the craic!
5. Pilgrimage of thanks: In 1940 my Great Uncle Jock was captured at Dunkirk and marched into Poland where he spent the war in a prisoner of war camp and was forced to mine coal. We want to visit those Normandy beaches, remember him and by paying our respects at the war cemeteries, also remember the fallen. Lest We Forget. Given 2025 is the 80th year of the liberation of the concentration and extermination camps – we also want to remember history and reflect on past wrongs and what we as individuals can influence.
Preparing our House for Renting
With looking at a significant absence finding a property manager to rent our house became important as well as deciding what would or wouldn’t be left there. We decided on obtaining a secure lock up moving everything into it.
1. Clean and declutter: First we had to clean out the garage, Serena and my approach to it varied – took 2 attempts and Serena’s approach was the most successful (but don’t say that out too loud).
2. Maintenance & repairs: When we first moved in, the villa needed some love, and we had many tradesmen working on the house to bring it back to life. However, with some decorating was needed to finish all the hardwork, including scrubbing and re-staining a 90m2 deck, washing the exterior of the house, finishing internal painting, even a new clothesline and safety fencing.
3. Healthy Homes Report: In New Zealand a Healthy Homes Report is necessary as part of any pre-tenancy requirements, this was arranged with any work to bring it to code completed.
4. Rental agreement, marketing & listing: Enlisting a good property manager made this part easier for us, with all the heavy lifting completed by someone else and given we won’t be there they are able to maintain the tenant relationship and monitor the property.
Do's and Don'ts of Traveling Overseas
To have any chance of the “Scotcher’s 2025 Global Grand Tour” lasting more than a couple of days, we had to prepare and in doing so we discovered some important things to do and certainly many things to avoid.
Do's
Do Plan Ahead: Plan your itinerary, accommodation, and transportation in advance to avoid last-minute stress. We have used Loop (a Microsoft planning tool to hold our ideas, details of the itinerary etc). Airbnb has been our main accommodation tool and you’ll see later in this post we are booked out until October already.
Do Pack Light: This is a funny one – our “light” includes 2 camera bags, 2 laptops, 2 large suitcases and 2 small holdalls (the holdalls was a late “add-on” as our bags were overweight and winter jackets bulky).
Do Stay Connected: Keeping in touch with family and friends back home including sharing our real-time Loop itinerary plus arranging eSims (Saily eSims purchased in our case based on the countries we are visiting). New Zealand connectivity abroad remains very expensive so changed our current mobile plans to pre-paid and hope that any texts to our New Zealand numbers are few (hint hint)!
Do your research on how you will move around: Our plans changed as we built up our itinerary we eventually moved away from a motorhome to a leased car – for us it was far cheaper and had a reduced risk of being stuck in a mode of transport that was untested. However, leasing a vehicle in the UK is not straight forward – let us know if this is an area you want us to go into more detail on – it might require a blog, or even a vlog all on its own!
Do your research based on your interests: Find those natural wonders that occur in each season and plan accordingly. Puffins only come to land to breed and return to the sea after only a couple of months – no point trying to see these in the autumn months! Re deer rut in the autumn and likewise no point planning a visit to see this in summer.
Do Stay Safe: Being travellers over a certain age you need to have your medications organised especially if you are travelling for more than a couple of months as we are. This is no mean undertaking and requires planning visits to the GP and as we discovered numerous visits to pharmacies – also is part of the reason for an extra bag blow out. Also make sure Wills, Power of Attorneys are up to date.
Do notify the bank & mail redirection: Ensure that your funds are accessible, and the bank don’t freak out suddenly treating any spending as fraudulent. It’s all these admin tasks that can be forgotten about – pick on a friend or family member to redirect your snail mail to, fortunately there’s a lot less of it than there used to be.
Don'ts
Don't Overpack: Ha, Ha, Ha – I’m sure there will be many comments and photographs as we meander our way across the globe, with everything but the kitchen sink. At least the number of contact lenses we each have will reduce daily!
Don't stress: As they say sh!t happens. Be as prepared as you can be and give each other a cuddle if, and when things go wrong. Remember it is in these entertaining moments that the real magic happens.
Don't ignore each other’s dreams: In building our lists of places to go and when. We made each other a promise that we will alternate the what we do to avoid one activity dominating the entire grand tour.
Don't Neglect Health Precautions: Take necessary health precautions, such as vaccinations and hygiene practices, to stay healthy during your trip.
Don't Forget Travel Insurance: Travel insurance can provide coverage for unexpected events like medical emergencies, trip cancellations, and lost luggage.
In hindsight – booking a return flight could have made arranging travel insurance easier as we had to go to a specific underwriter to obtain a 12 month travel insurance policy (at significant cost). Had we booked a return ticket allowing for an amended return travel date this may have made it easier (and cheaper), particularly with the options available with NZ credit cards. However in our eagerness we hadn’t stopped to consider this.
Singapore to Cumbria
Liverpool to ?
