Happy New Year everyone!
We made it, 2020 is over, and we are feeling very hopeful for a brighter 2021. While 2020 was a difficult year for many reasons, we also have several things to be thankful for, and so this blog will look back at our highlights of the last year, with regards to our travel blog.
We travelled to 3 different countries!
It seems hard to believe that our trip to Japan in January was also in 2020, what a carefree time - we had no idea what was to come! That trip was honestly one of the most incredible journeys we have ever been on. Japan is just the most astonishing country and we would go back again in a heartbeat.
In July, the UK's travels restrictions were lifted and we were able to fly to Croatia. It seemed unreal to be back on a plane again! We spent 6 gorgeous days in Dubrovnik and apart from masks in shops, it felt incredibly normal.
By September, travel abroad was no longer possible, but we still had freedom of movement within the UK, so we decided to take a road trip up to Scotland. We spent a week hiking in the Cairngorms and exploring the Scottish Highlands.
We hit 15000 followers on Instagram!
We are so thrilled that so many people have decided to follow our travel journey. Hopefully we can continue to inspire people over the next 12 months, and connect with lots more gorgeous travel accounts!
We did our first collaboration with a tourism board!
During our trip to Croatia we were thrilled to collaborate with the Dubrovnik tourism board, and had a great time creating content to promote our time in Croatia. This was a major tick on our travel blogging bucket list and hopefully we can do more of these once the tourism industry is able to operate again.
We also had some lovely collaborations with 9 awesome travel brands:
In January we collaborated with the GORGEOUS Kyoto Yura Hotel MGallery in Kyoto, Japan.
I Go Adventure Travel bands sent us two of their ingenious travel bands to use on our trip.
Rise Traveler sent us their amazing universal travel adaptor to take to Japan, and Joby sent us a gorilla pod.
We had the pleasure of working with Mapiful three times in 2020 to promote their beautiful personalised maps.
In the summer we were delighted to partner with Hempnath, a wonderful ecofriendly brand who make beautiful bags. We have used our backpack and bumbag constantly this year! They use 100% natural hemp, which is much better for the environment than cotton, and are also partners of Eden Reforestation Projects, who work with local communities to create sustainable incomes for villages in developing countries through planting millions of trees.
While we were in Dubrovnik we also collaborated with Dubrovnik Boats, and spent an amazing day exploring the Elaphite Islands with them.
Back home we were approached by another wonderful eco brand with a life changing mission, One Gin. 10% of profits from each bottle of gin sold goes towards their clean water foundation, providing safe drinking water and sustainable sanitation programmes around the world. You can see the post we created for them here.
Our last collaboration of 2020 was with sand resistant beach towel company Tesalate - they send us a gorgeous 'towel for two' which is currently on our bed, and will shortly go on the bed in our campervan. We can't wait to take it to a beach! You can see the post we created for them here.
We bought a van!
2021 will be a whole new adventure for us, as we take our first steps into the van conversion journey. We recently published a blog all about Osprey, our Vauxhall Vivaro, and now that the UK is back under strict Covid restrictions again, we'll have lots of time to crack on with the van build!
As for this year, we're making wish lists rather than resolutions. We can but hope that with vaccines rolling out, we might be able to travel abroad again by the summer, with some UK van exploration by spring.
We'd love to visit our friends in Dubai (our 2020 trip was cancelled), take Osprey over to Europe, and if we can make it to South East Asia by the end of the year we'll be laughing!
Until then, keep safe everyone. Here's to a happy, healthy new year with lots of adventures.
What were your wins of 2020? We'd love to hear in the comments below.