Tag: traveling

May 4, 2026

Notes From a Spring of Travel

I’ve been busy this spring, but it hasn’t been work that’s kept me occupied. I took advantage of shoulder season prices for some weekends away, and more recently, went to visit family and friends in Canada.

Nice, France

In mid-March, I headed to a warm place: Nice, France. The day I arrived, rain poured down and clouds darkened the sunset. Standing on the windy, rainy pebble beach, looking at pastel buildings along the shoreline, I wondered if I’d left Brighton at all!

The next day’s brilliant sunlight made the Mediterranean Sea glow turquoise. Ah, there was the weather people go here for. I explored the Old Town’s rainbow buildings and cobblestones, the Cour Saleya flower market where I sampled local specialties (socca, a chickpea crepe, was my favourite), and climbed Castle Hill, exploring Parc de la Colline du Château with its ruins and views.

Another wonderful thing about Nice is how easy it is to take the train (a comfortable, convenient, double-decker train) back and forth to other parts of the French Riviera. So I went to Eze, a medieval village built on a cliff. The train took me to Nietzsche’s Path, which I climbed for an hour to reach the town. (Sadly, it didn’t offer any philosophical inspiration.) I also visited the gorgeous seaside town of Villefranche-sur-Mer and took a stroll around Monaco’s casino, gardens, and yacht-filled harbour.

Dublin, Ireland

My visit to Ireland began in Dublin with a stay in Clink i Lár hostel, a former jail. I was near many of the sights, including the Ha’Penny Bridge (named for its historic toll), Trinity College Dublin, where I saw the Book of Kells (an illuminated manuscript) and library, and the Temple Bar district, where I spent a fun night bar hopping and listening to live music in each venue.

I also ventured to Kildare County. Brigid has been a big inspiration for me, both the Celtic goddess and the saint who later shared her name. I visited St. Brigid’s Well in County Clare with its statue, St. Brigid’s Cathedral (former site of St. Brigid’s mixed-gender monastery and eternal flame) and Church in Kildare Town, and the smaller St. Brigid’s holy well in Kilcullen, along with a nearby fairy trail that featured folklore plaques and fairy houses.

Back in Dublin, I toured St. Patrick’s Cathedral, visited the Guinness Storehouse, and ate potato cakes.

Some sights in Dublin and Kildare County

Lake District, England

I spent Easter in the Lake District, contemplating a move that didn’t work out. I’m glad to have spent more time in this beautiful part of the world, though. I spent time in Windermere, Bowness-on-Windermere, and nearby Lancaster.

I’ve done a lot of the tourist things on previous visits, such as taking a cruise and seeing Wordsworth’s home and the Beatrix Potter museum. This time, I was visiting late enough in the season to see Beatrix Potter’s old Hill Top farmhouse and gardens, which took a ferry ride and a long climb. The writer was a real character, studying botany, writing in a secret code she invented, and farming and preserving much of the local landscape, including the Herdwick sheep breed.

P.E.I. and New Brunswick, Canada

Going from the UK to Canada, I left spring flowers for a bit of lingering snow.

First, my brother and I stayed with my mom on Prince Edward Island, where she was house- and dog-sitting. We stayed in a beautiful farmhouse with horses in the field and fit games of fetch in between our jobs. I caught up with old friends from my P.E.I. school days, some of whom I hadn’t seen in 20 years! Then I went with my mom to her home in New Brunswick, saw another old friend, visited beaches, sold books to a local libraries, and fed chickadees on a nature trail.

So, it’s been a busy time. Despite uncomfortable plane rides and jet lag, I find travel to be one of life’s most enlivening experiences. Every trip changes my perspective in some way. Now I’m back in my flat, and I’ve planted some pots of seeds from overseas. I look forward to seeing what grows.

It’s hard to believe that this time last year, I had recently launched a book (my poetry collection The Heart Decided to Move), was going back and forth from Boston to see my dad in the hospital, and was part of a team working frantically to bring Joan: the Musical onstage in the Brighton Fringe! It all feels a million miles away. I’m grateful that this year, I’ve been able to travel by choice, not circumstance.

For now, I’ve put away my suitcase and am focusing on the Climbing High speculative fiction anthology I’m editing. The public call for submissions has closed, and commissioned contributors have been sending in wonderful stories. It’s time for me to travel through words.

September 3, 2021

Working Away, or My Experience with Workaway

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many people to make decisions and try things that they wouldn’t have otherwise. With this summer’s travel restrictions, it led me to Workaway, a website that facilitates cultural exchanges where “workawayers” stay with hosts, trading labor for room and board.

I spent two weeks on a workaway this summer on an estate in rural Wales. The hosts were a couple with a young child, along with the mother/grandmother who owned the estate. It was a working bed and breakfast that had a large garden and some livestock (pigs and various types of birds). It couldn’t have been a bigger change from the hustle and bustle of London!

I grew up in the country, and being back in a rural setting felt certain ways like coming home. I knew the berries. I knew how to weed the garden. I also enjoyed the differences. I certainly didn’t grow up with beautiful stone houses and peacocks!

Doing a Workaway is a fascinating way to get to know a new place because you’re integrated socially. You have a role, a job (while most stays are volunteer, some Workaways operate as businesses and pay for income-earning tasks), and a host family. I liked getting to know the people I stayed with while I got to know more about Wales. The family hosted relatives for much of my stay, and they often had friends over for large shared dinners, so there was always a rotating cast of people to talk to. They were all very welcoming, and with self-isolation such a recent memory, it was great to have a built-in social circle around.

Workaway is intended as a cultural exchange. Many Workawayers take the opportunity to travel and experience daily life in different countries or regions. There were certainly differences between my life on the workaway and my daily life at home, as well as differences in social norms and attitudes.

My advice for others interested in trying a workaway is to be open to these differences, to be open socially (even if you’re an awkward introvert like me), and to learn from others. Also, expect the unexpected! No matter how well you pack or how carefully you research the area you’re traveling to, you will likely encounter difficulties and joys during your stay that you haven’t prepared for. Be prepared to work hard, pitch in, and help out. Get ready, too, to have fun.

If you’re thinking of trying Workaway or something similar, go for it! It’s a good way to get out of your comfort zone, experience a different way of life, live in a different place for a time, and forge new connections.

September 3, 2019

5 Ways to Use Travel as a Springboard for Writing

If you love to write and have the privilege of being able to travel, you might dream of doing both things in tandem. Maybe you’ve heard stories of digital nomads who hop from country to country and make a living from their laptops, or writers who travel in their camper vans. If that’s not a lifestyle you’re looking to commit to (at this point, anyway), here are 5 shorter-term ideas for combining the work of writing with the life experience of travel.

1. Write while in transit

J. K. Rowling famously got the idea for the first Harry Potter book while on a train. If you can write on a bus, train, subway, or plane without getting motion sick, those are great excellent places to do it. Time that might otherwise be spent watching Netflix or just sitting there can be surprisingly productive, with the motion bringing your mind into “the zone”. If you’re too sensitive to motion to look down at your paper or laptop, these forms of transport are still great places to people watch. Look around you and imagine the life stories of your fellow passengers. Ask yourself how they’d react if a wild situation were to suddenly occur. Amtrak recognized the unique inspiration-generating quality of time spent in motion when it offered train-based writing fellowships (a program that, sadly, no longer exists). Walking, a shorter and self-propelled form of transit, is also great for generating ideas.

2. Keep a travel journal

Many writers keep notebooks for their ideas. While traveling, if you want to capture stories from the road, bring a journal and try keeping track of what happens each day. Given the unpredictability that often accompanies travel, you never know when or how inspiration might strike. It might not be immediate, either. If you hold on to your travel journals, they might become sources for ideas in hindsight. Cheryl Strayed kept a journal of her time on the Pacific Coast Trail and came back to it 17 years later, reshaping the material into her beloved memoir Wild.

3. Go on a writer’s retreat

There’s a reason for the popularity of writers’ retreats. Sometimes nothing gets the creative juices flowing like the fresh perspective provided by a new setting, with time and space away from your daily life. Getting out of your routine is one of the gifts of a writing retreat, and often the locales are inspiring in themselves. There are writing retreats for many different budgets and goals, from solitary cabins to vacation-like experiences that bring people together and incorporate exciting local activities.

4. Write about places you visit

Lots of good writing is born from journeying: the whole genres of travel writing and travel journalism, memoirs, poetry, and the list goes on. Writing about the places you visit is a great way to get involved and get to know people there, as I discovered while in the Northwest Territories where I made wonderful connections by writing about fashion shows and arts festivals for local newspapers and magazines. Visiting places can spark ideas for pitches to travel websites or magazines. If you write professionally, in many countries you can claim related travel costs as professional expenses for tax purposes. Some locales offer travel grants for writing and researching place-based projects. If you’re lucky, you might even break into travel writing that will send you somewhere to report from on the ground.

5. Use the setting to fuel your imagination

Sometimes writers write about the places they visit, and sometimes they use travel to invent new places. If you’re writing speculative fiction, travel and worldbuilding can go hand in hand, as imaginary places are typically grounded in real ones. Would the Stillness of N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy exist, or be as convincing, without the author’s research trip to visit volcanoes in Hawai’i? Ellen Goodlett, author of the YA fantasy Rule, spent a year traveling the world with the Remote Year program while completing her novel. One of her interviews details how bits and pieces the places she visited showed up in her book’s imaginary kingdom.

Do you dream of writing and traveling? What ways have you thought of to combine the two?