All photos taken during my trip to the south-west coast of France in June 2022 10 years ago today, on 13th June 2012, I published my first handful of posts on the The Well-Travelled Postcard. Here is the very first post. It was the sunshine-filled summer following my final exams at Uni, I was at my grandmother’s dream-like house in West Sussex, and I could finally sit down and turn my ideas into reality. My late granny and I discussed the blog’s name over and over, and she was incredibly excited about the project, as she was with all my endeavours. She also loved to travel, and she’d amassed a ..read more

Happy New Year! Before I dive into my plans and goals for 2022, I love to indulge in some reflection on the year just past, following in a tradition of reflective posts, which I’ve published ever since starting this blog back in 2012. In a whistle-stop, my year went as follows… January-April was spent almost entirely hibernating in London in the UK’s third lockdown: working hard from home, looking after our family cat, countless socially distanced park walks, seeing my boyfriend at weekends in my ‘social bubble’, trying to explore new parts of London, and eating in chilly restaurant gardens ..read more

This post contains affiliate links and I may earn a small commission when you click on the links, at no additional cost to you, which helps support the running of this blog. As an Amazon Affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases. ___________________ The pandemic made interior designers of us all, did it not? I’ve certainly cared more than ever before about my living environment and over the past year have upgraded almost everything, from silk curtains to bed linen, pillows to towels, new chests of drawers and an ever growing population of house plants. I’ve finally got a Lumie Bodyclock lig ..read more

Earlier this year I created this blog post series of Well-Travelled Paintings, to share my progress with re-learning to paint, to draw out the memories of the places and travel destinations I paint, and also keep myself accountable to my goal to paint more often. Each painting featured comes accompanied by a mini-guide to the place depicted – a taster to whet your appetite. Other paintings in the series so far include Hampshire, Cefalu and Palermo in Sicily, the French Alps, Greek Islands, China and all paintings can be found here. What does this pai ..read more

I recently became a charity trustee for the first time, for an organisation and cause I care deeply about and for whom I’ve volunteered in the past: it’s the youth empowerment and sustainable development charity that I worked with in Nepal in 2016, called Raleigh International. I’ve been over the moon for several months about the role, right from the get-go of writing my application and interviewing, through a comprehensive induction and into the trustee board meetings and sub-committees themselves. Trusteeship is a role I’d heard of others doing, mainly people of my parents’ generation, but ..read more

After a busy summer kept me away from the blog, I’ve just spent 10 days on holiday by the sea in south-west France, on what feels like my annual DIY retreat. Like all good retreats, I am now feeling infinitely refreshed and topped up with new-found motivation to tackle life! I spent 8 of those days on a digital detox, without mobile data, news or notifications from the outside world, and that break undoubtedly helped restore me to my former, energised self. June and July were particularly busy as I started not one but two new roles! One was a change in my full-time job, moving to an exciting ..read more

I recently landed back in the UK after a month in Kefalonia, a stunning Greek island in the Ionian Sea. We spent most of our days hiking and exploring remote beaches, but there were a handful of more exotic and unusual activities too… One such activity turned out to be paragliding! Although I’ve been skydiving once before in Slovenia, I’d never been paragliding. One day in Kefalonia I saw a paraglider swoop over me while I relaxed by the pool of our third and final apartment, and I rather impulsively decided to try it for myself! Here are the highlights of a 20-minute paraglide over the incre ..read more

A special bonus episode of The Well-Travelled Podcast is now live! I recorded Series 1 of my podcast in 2020, but I also record one-off bonus episodes from my travels as and when I’m away, reminiscent of the postcards that originally inspired this blog and its name. This bonus episode comes live from my month-long trip to the Greek island of Kefalonia – my first trip abroad in 8 months due to the pandemic. It’s both an insight into the uncertainty, stress and challenges of travelling abroad from the UK during a pandemic, and also a postcard of the island, offering a guide to the best villages ..read more

I’m worried that I’ve lost my travel mojo. The past 15 months of pandemic have changed my interests, priorities, life goals, travel style, chronotype, routine, attitude, what I thought was my identity, and more. Much of that for the better, I should add. Some things I’ve happily bidden farewell to (hello early bird!), others I think I’m mourning the loss of. Travel is one of the latter, of course. I’m sad to say that my March 2020 blog post of predictions for the travel industry post-pandemic have in the large part all come true, although I certainly didn’t think the pandemic would persist th ..read more

This series of Well-Travelled Paintings is designed to share my progress re-learning to paint, draw out the memories of the places and travel destinations I paint, and also keep myself accountable to my goal to paint more often. Each painting featured comes accompanied by a mini-guide to the place depicted – a taster to whet your appetite for when we can travel once again. Other paintings in the series so far feature include Hampshire, Cefalu and Palermo in Sicily, the French Alps and French coast, Greek Islands, and all paintings can be found here. Although the rest of this series of Well-T ..read more