What does a travel blogger wear? Well, if you’re looking at Instagram, a lot of very impractical long colourful dresses, yellow waterproofs especially against grey-green backgrounds and probably Teva foam sandals. Bikinis as often as possible. Clothes that make them look really good. Oh, and things that can be affiliate-linked for profit, obviously.
I dress mostly for practicality. I’m never going to wear a dress longer than ankle-length because if I can fall over it on the stairs, I’m going to fall off the mountain. I got kicked off Amazon’s affiliate programme because I wasn’t making any money, so all my links are going to be plain ordinary free not-giving-me-a-penny links. And as a general rule, I’m packing to fit everything in a carry-on bag and somehow, however hard I try, I’m not a light packer.
Headwear
Let’s start at the top! In summer, I tend to wear a grubby and faded dark blue bucket hat that probably started off belonging to my dad. I know as style goes, bucket hats are up there with Crocs but they’re convenient, they don’t mind getting squished and they keep the sun off me.
In winter, I have a collection of four hats, two scarves and a hood, all made for me as Christmas presents by my friend Tom of The Bear Knitcessities. I have so many now that I have to keep a list to see which one gets the next turn and I often take two hats to give them less time waiting in the queue.
If there’s even a hint of daylight, I wear sunglasses because as well as a polar bear, I am also a vampire and I’m quite sensitive to light. My sunglasses are prescription so I can actually see through them and they’re polarised to cut out glare. Once you try polarised, you can never go back. Prescription and polarised is quite a difficult combination to get so I can’t afford to be pernickety about style – find them, buy them.
I have three pairs of earrings I tend to travel with. The main ones that I mostly wear day-to-day are smallish but reasonably thick hoops from Etsy in gunmetal grey made of stainless steel which means they don’t react and tarnish when I wear them in mineral-rich geothermal water. I also have two pairs of gold waterproof earrings from Lovisa, one in thick chunky huggies and one in thinner hammered huggies and they don’t seem to react either. I have a couple of matching gold chains which I might wear around my neck if I want to look sort of put-together in the water. Otherwise, I have an Alrún Orka bindrune pendant I usually wear and a little gold oval St Christopher my grandad gave me for my 18th birthday – both of these would discolour in most water.
Tops
In cold places, I wear long-sleeved thermal tops. My collection runs from really cheap see-through Primark ones up to a blue striped Icebreaker merino but I generally wear mid-range Sainsbury’s or M&S thermals these days. My current favourite is a yellow one from the Uniqlo men’s range.
I usually wear ordinary t-shirts – whatever was handy or clean while I was packing. But I’m making an effort to wear brighter colours lately – looks better on Instagram, so recently I’ve been trying to be more intentional with my packing. My long-sleeved Lucy & Yak Rey tops in Rainbow and 2021’s Pastel Rainbow variant have been making appearances lately, along with my little collection of Uniqlo x Marimekko t-shirts, especially the pink and orange scalloped striped one. And if I’m trying to save space, I pack my Solo by Backpacking Bananas crop tops which I have in both the black and the mauve – they’re really light and silky but just long enough for me to not feel too uncomfortable in.
For outer layers, I either go for my Solo sweatshirt in Heather Mustard – softer than your average sweatshirt and slightly cropped again so it takes up less space – or my dark red zip hoodie with lots of concealed pockets which is a useful anti-pickpocket device but also just useful for keeping all the things close at hand. I tend to pick the hoodie if I’m going to be wearing it a lot and the sweatshirt if I’m going to be carrying it a lot.
Then there’s my Uniqlo ultralight down jacket, which I bought two years ago as the last of the previous year’s style available in my size (and therefore at sale rather than full price). It’s pretty warm; it’s very small which makes it pretty ideal for travel, even if only as a mid-layer if I go somewhere really cold. For proper cold, I’ll probably wear my battery-powered coil-heated jacket, although it’s marginally more effective if you don’t wear too much underneath it.
For jewellery and accessories, I wear a Casio Baby G watch – fulfilling the dreams of twelve-year-old me. It’s waterproof and pretty indestructible so there’s no sense in picking one of my others. And I wear assorted bracelets on the other wrist – I have a thin stainless steel chain and a stainless steel bangle, both from Amazon and both non-reactive in geothermal water, and then probably one of my El Camino bracelets. At this point, I have four, because even without too many spacers and gratuitous extra steps, I keep filling them up, and because I buy singles not doubles. My blue one is western Europe, more or less. Red for more Eastern Europe. Black for cold places and lime green for UK adventures. All the steps (beads) are either stainless steel or glass so they’re fine in the water too.
Legs
Hiking trousers. Lightweight ones, preferably with zip-off legs that turn them into shorts for summer and thicker ones for winter. They dry quickly and have zipped pockets – what more could you want for travel? I do possess denim shorts that I sometimes wear but they take up more space than the trousers and don’t deal well with getting wet so I generally save them for when I’m sure it’s mostly going to be both hot and dry. If it’s particularly cold I’ll add leggings or thermal longjohns under my winter hiking trousers.
On my feet, I have three main pairs of shoes. In summer, I generally live in hiking sandals. I have a lot of feelings about these – namely that their lifespan seems to have gone from 14 years for my first pair to barely one year now but otherwise they’re comfortably, supportive, keep my feet cool and save me having to pack or carry socks. If it’s winter, I’ll probably wear my mountain boots, which I bought in 2018 and which are made by Mammut – I forget the style but I’ll link the review from when they were new-ish. And if it’s too cold for sandals but not snowy or icy enough for boots, I’ll wear my trainers/approach shoes. I can’t remember what my current ones are but I suspect they’re Peter Storm or Karrimor or something inexpensive like that. Socks are generally ordinary black ankle socks from Tesco, M&S or Primark – I don’t wear hiking socks except maybe to keep my feet warm indoors in winter. I rarely carry extra shoes – only if I’m camping in Iceland and have my tent & sleeping bag in checked luggage because I’ll mostly want the sandals but it’s always useful to have boots if you find yourself in geothermal areas where you might step in boiling mud, or you’re going to hike across the mountains to see a volcano.
Obviously, there are other things I wear. I have an entire summer capsule wardrobe that I took to Croatia last year, my grey-green reputation stadium tour t-shirt makes a lot of appearances and sometimes I’m just grabbing whatever’s clean when I’m trying to pack. But as a general rule, these are my rules of thumb and what you’re mostly likely to see me in while I’m adventuring.
I Am A Polar Bear 