Europe
Just call me Poppins – Scarlet Poppins
Flying into Madrid and with my instructions clamped tightly in my hand I negotiated passport control, the metro and the Cercanias train system to arrive at my destination for the next week . Senorio de Illescas is a dormitory town which lies bang in between Madrid...
10. Scarlet & the Golfers in Le Touquet
The following article has been updated since it was first published in October 2013. It tells the story of a week in France with seven guys on a golfing holiday. Make sure that you read to the end because I will also tell you how and why I changed my name and how that...
9. House-sitting in the mountains and then Cascais
After saying our goodbyes at Lisbon airport, I set off on the next leg of my adventure. I was to look after a house in the Catalan mountains. After a long day’s travel and a detour via a supermarket courtesy of Ruth who was a friend of my friends and who had very...
8. Can you ever be too old?
This article was written whilst I was in Portugal right at the very beginning of my travel adventures and it was an occasional reoccurring theme over the next few years - thanks in part to the emotional baggage that I was dragging along with me. Are all of your...
7. Lagos, Portugal
We arrived in Lagos for our break from the work exchange scheme but finding our room for the night took on a whole new direction when deep inside the labyrinthine back streets and alleys which make up Lagos’ old town, my friend´s mobile died. We had been making...
6. A work exchange in the Algarve
‘We shwim with the nature here. If you would like to shwim with the nature too with no clothes on then that is all right by us’. Those rather worrying words were spoken by our host who had just picked us up in his car from the side of a deserted lane in the middle of...
5. Lisbon and my first Music Festival
We were very lucky to find accommodation in an AirBnB with Guida in her apartment in Lisbon. She lived just ten minutes walk from the Optimus Alive Music Festival venue but she provided us with much more than just beds for the night. Before we got down to the...
4. UK to Portugal by Train
Just a month after we had excitedly unfolded the piece of paper which would dictate our fate we were off. It was hardly an auspicious start, tramping through the deserted streets of Plymouth at midnight to catch the bus to London, but that couldn’t dampen my spirits...
3. Taking Back Control
I spent a lot of time considering my options whilst I was in Spain over the New Year and a plan formulated whereby I would apply for an extended leave of absence from my job and travel to South America for seven months. I was accepted onto a volunteer programme in...
2. Cava and grapes
I have updated this article that I wrote in January 2013 to introduce myself to you if you are new to me and my story. My journey took me from a nice job in the UK at a university in Plymouth to Europe, South America and South East Asia. Whilst my journey had...