It’s the last day of 2018 so I think it’s the perfect time to take a look back at the last year. This is 2018 In Review.
2018 in numbers
I kept a spreadsheet absolutely religiously this year and I can now tell you a lot of numbers.
- 7 countries visited
- 3 new countries visited
- 55 nights away from home
- 33 nights abroad
- 10 nights under canvas
- 7 nights away on Guiding activities
- 27 beds slept in
- 5 currencies used
- 3 work trips to London
- 15,000 miles flown
- 2,500 miles by road
- 1,600 miles by train
- 19,153 miles travelled altogether
- 11 airports
- 18 flights
- 2 passport stamps
- 2 outdoor pools
- 8 languages encountered
- 7 capital cities visited
- 1 play seen
- 1 music festival
- 5 live music experiences
- 3 archery sessions taught
- 1 fencing teaching qualification gained
- 1 outdoor activity instructor job acquired
- 1 blizzard survived
- 9 scrapbooks made (3 not finished)
- 105 blog posts written
2018 in experiences
I had quite an interesting 2018. Did some things I’d wanted to do, some things I hadn’t expected to do and some things other people didn’t expect me to do.
- Walked the Laugavegur Trail
- Went to the Chernobyl exclusion zone
- Saw Taylor Swift live
- Saw Queen live
- Saw Public Service Broadcasting live
- Earned a fencing qualification
- Learnt to whittle
- Redecorated my bedroom
- Kept up a twice-a-week posting schedule on this blog for another entire year
- Scrapbooked a trip I took in 2002
- Learnt to more or less read Cyrillic
- Saw 13 shows in under 3 days at the Edinburgh Fringe
- Watched all of Bodyguard
- Watched all of Killing Eve (three times!)
- Watched Voyager season 1 and part of season 2
2018 in blogs
I’ve written 105 blogs here on iamapolarbear.com. I’m not going to link them all here but these are some particularly popular ones, particular favourites and other assorted highlights.
The Laugavegur Trail Diaries
Chernobyl
Walking the Grænagil-Laugavegur loop
Greek chocolate vs Swedish chocolate
Swedish chocolate vs Swedish chocolate
How to photograph the Northern Lights for non-photographers
Rauðfeldar: one of Iceland’s better-kept secrets
The Guide Camp Kit List part one: the plate bag
The paragliding series
I climbed the highest mountain on Dartmoor
Thanks for reading this year, everyone. It’s been great. I’ll see you next year (that’s Thursday. I’ll see you on Thursday. It’ll be on Tom & Juliet’s Annual Adventure.)