2024 in review and plans for 2025

Posted on by Julie

Ah, we’ve come to the time of year when I take a look at my year in travel and in blogging and think about what I’m doing next year.

As usual – or at least as often – I’m going to start with travel by numbers.

58 nights away from home
22 different beds
10 nights under canvas
7 countries
3 new countries
5 different currencies spent
3 Girlguiding trips away
12 flights
10 airports
7 airlines
0 upgrades
12,870 miles flown
12 stations
10 Eras celebrated
9 swimming pools sampled
15 outdoor pools lounged in
8 languages encountered
119 blog posts published (including this one)
14 videos posted to YouTube
6 comedy shows seen
1 Silver Award received
1 Bronze Award completed but not yet received
1 Traverse Creator Award shortlist nomination

2024 in travel

In January/February I went to Georgia (via Cyprus because of inconvenient flight times). I was nervous because Georgia’s very different from anywhere I’ve been before and because I was going to Traverse 24, a conference for travel creators who are so far ahead of me in proficiency, creativity, earnings and confidence but it was great. I really enjoyed my time in and around Tbilisi and it wasn’t nearly as intimidating as I expected to meet bigger and better creators (it was a very odd feeling to meet someone  there who was in a similar position to me as I was to all these people and who regarded me as one of the experts!)

A selfie, in a burgundy hoodie and colourful hat, standing on the Peace Bridge, which is a sort of curvy glass bridge inlaid with thousands of little lights, just early enough in the morning that you can still see the lights.

In May I went to Dubrovnik, mostly for the sea kayaking but partly because Croatia’s been on my to-do list for years. It was a bit hot and the Old Town was far too busy so maybe I’ll find a quieter place for next time.

A selfie on the waterfront in Dubrovik with the town on the hillside behind me and some very blue water. I'm wearing a pink flowery dress and a very big floppy pink straw hat.

In July/August I took the train from London to Warsaw to see Taylor Swift, with stops in Berlin and three other cities in Poland. Hand luggage only is nonetheless too much luggage for a railway odyssey but after a mess at Brussels thanks to a late Eurostar (don’t know if you remember sabotage on the French railways? Yeah, it was that day), it all went pretty smoothly. And I correctly guessed so many of the Eras Tour outfits that I forgot to even think about whether or not I liked them.

A selfie in Warsaw in a pale blue t-shirt and a navy bucket hat in front of a Taylor Swift mural on the side of an apartment building.

In October/November I went to Budapest because I had holiday allowance to use up and I’m starting to write a book about bathing culture & hot water and needed to do some research. In a week, I squeezed in six thermal baths and general Budapest sightseeing and now realise I need to correct the fact that I know nothing else about Hungary.

A selfie in a rainbow-striped top from a balloon overlooking the park in Budapest.

And just the other week, in December, I went to Iceland! I’m still working through Budapest and end of year so I haven’t started writing that but it’s coming in the New Year. Actually, I’ve kind of run out of things to do in and around Reykjavik in winter so I’m looking forward to hiring a car and getting out into the countryside again in the summer but I did some swimming, saw some lava and identified a hraunskitur (hraun = lava, -ur is a case ending that seems to denote a noun and I’ll idly note that many combinations of s and/or k seem to be pronounced sh) in a cave.

A selfie in colourful knitwear and a yellow hoodie against a snowy scene and dark blue sea.

2024 in adventure

I did a no-cruise cruise in April, trying to do all the exciting things you can do on a modern cruise ship without leaving the dry land of Southampton, which featured a cheap plasticky hotel room, swimming and axe-throwing. I was so proud of that concept and maybe I could have executed it better – or maybe I could have documented it better.

A timer selfie (probably using a bin as tripod) of me leaning over the railings around the Westfield shopping centre walkway as if I'm leaning on the rails of the imaginary cruise ship's deck.

I spent ten nights under canvas – I did a camping trip in the New Forest where a horse tried to invade my tent, a tree camping trip on my own semi-private island, Rebel Summer Camp where I fell in love with the 3G swing and finished my Survivor badge, and two fire-themed Guiding events, where I spent eight hours campfire singing and teaching archery & fencing. I had a catastrophic large-scale SUP event in Torquay (there was panic, crying and a large luxury speedboat-thing), a weekend hiking on Dartmoor, a weekend in London and a weekend doing a Girlguiding large-scale event all by myself in a shepherds hut since it didn’t happen this year.

A selfie on the beach just as sunset turns my face golden-pink. It's chilly enough that I'm wearing my down jacket but you can make out my Brownsea Island neckerchief and pink t-shirt underneath.

I spent quite a while on the water. I was back at boat club this year, I did the Croatian island kayaking adventure, I hired a kayak a couple of times and I took to taking my SUP out to sea rather than a polluted river. I didn’t blog about it but I tried a sensory deprivation tank (some of my senses are too sensitive to be able to be deprived), had a couple of spa evenings and one day, and swam 40km, mostly in outdoor pools.

A selfie in a blue kayak. I'm wearing an orange and grey buoyancy aid, an orange and blue towline and a long-sleeved navy swimsuit underneath.

2024 in blogging

There are three big things. In increasing order of importance:

My viewing statistics plummeted, thanks to various Google updates designed to keep searchers on Google’s own pages rather than taking them to the ones with the information they’re looking for. I’ve earned £60 in nine and a half years so that doesn’t really affect my life, only how I feel when I look at my bar charts. On the other hand, since the first half of the year was reasonably good, I did still beat last year’s statistics – in fact, reasonably substantially. A little over 9% increase and a 1247% increase on 2016, which was my first full year of statistics.

But… I broke my blog. I decided it wasn’t worth paying for hosting, since what I earn in ads is nothing and hosting is just a money pit but I convinced myself that I’d set it up wrong and wasn’t even using the hosting – until 48 hours after it expired and the whole blog vanished. Luckily I’d exported it all to a backup site a fortnight earlier and started copying it to Substack from then on (might find a new audience there in a generation that doesn’t read blogs) so I had everything, if not in the same place, but it took a lot of trial & error and a lot of swearing and cursing to get it all back up and running. Don’t do what I did.

And I got shortlisted for a Traverse Creator Award! The idea is that you nomimate yourself and then rather than put it to a public vote (ie popularity contest), a panel of experts picks the shortlist and the winner. To get onto the shortlist was incredible – some of the other nominees were people I’ve read or watched for years so it was amazing company to be in.

A selfie in a bar at the TCAs with Catherine, who's wearing a leafprinted dress. I'm wearing a sequinned blazer mini dress but you can't see much of it between the hair and the lighting - great blazes of pink across the picture.

2024 in everything else

What else is there? I successfully grew the Christmas parsnips, the tomatoes, onions and spring onions did well, I grew my first passionfruit, the potatoes did ok but the carrots and beans were an absolute failure. I released my second book on my cheerleaders – not heard back from either of them so no idea whether I just need to burn the whole thing or whether I want to unleash it on the public next. I finished off the felt patrol pennant I started to make at Camp Wildfire in 2023 (forgot all about it until I found it rolled up on my craft table). I finished my Trefoil Guild Silver Voyage Award (think DofE but achievable by housebound 65+-year-olds) and got started on Gold and I finished my Bronze Elemental Challenge.

A dish of roasted carrots and parsnips (I grew the parsnips). Behind it is a plate of stuffing balls, turkey, gammon and pigs in blankets.

Does the fact that I walked 1151km (at time of writing during the afternoon of Saturday 28th, so got a few more days to go) count as “everything else” rather than “adventure”? And what about the fact that I’ve spent 734 hours outdoors so far this year? 1000 may be beyond me, unless I spend a bit more time camping. Oh, and my purple orchid flowered for the third time – well, the third since I’ve had it but the fourth if you include the flowering it was in the middle of when I bought it. Orchids really do thrive on neglect plus being plopped in the sink for ten minutes every fortnight.

A selfie in a yellow hoodie and sunglasses down a shaded winter country lane.

2025

Well, my plans for 2025, as usual, are a little vague, almost to the point of blankness. I was thinking of using A Certain Birthday next summer as an excuse to do that trip to New Zealand that will otherwise sit on my “to do one day” list for the rest of my life but I gather July/August isn’t necessarily the best time to do that sort of trip. That’s provisionally scheduled for February/March 2026 now which leaves 2025 empty. I want to go and do a tour of some of the UNESCO best spa towns in Germany as research for my Bath Book, I’d like to go to Istanbul and have a proper Turkish bath too. Maybe hire a camper van for my summer Iceland trip, maybe go to Rebel Summer Camp. Get something at least vaguely resembling a first draft of the aforementioned Bath Book written.

As for the blog in 2025, we’ll see how that goes as well but I’ll definitely be starting off by finishing the Budapest posts, doing the Iceland posts and maybe going back and filling in the gaps with all the adventures I haven’t written about. Enjoy the last day of 2024 (waste it as you will – I’ll certainly be spending it being lazy) and let’s hope 2025 is a good year!

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