Top 10 Countries for Meaningful Adventure

Guest    ash, New Adventure Travel Ideas     adventure holidays, Adventure Travel, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Fiji, mozambique, New Zealand, RTW, RTW travel, south africa, volunteering abroad, Work abroad, Working Abroad

Travelling for pure adventure is great, but when adventure travel is paired with meaningful travel, your trip is brought to a whole new level. Volunteering abroad is the perfect way to lend a hand while traveling.

Explore lost cities in Greece. Image: Flickr/ Nadya Peek

Many volunteer abroad programs provide one or two weeks of adventure once the volunteer work is finished. Other volunteer programs, such as working with lions, are adventures in themselves.

You can head to GoAbroad.com, a directory-based site to help travelers find the perfect volunteer, work and study abroad opportunities, to explore hundreds of volunteer abroad options. But we’ll save you some time by listing the top 10 countries worth volunteering in for adventure seekers.

read more

Over 50s adventure holidays and the youngsters who can’t keep up!

Mark Pawlak    ash     4x4, adventure holidays, australia, Australia Overlanding Tours, Cevennes National Park, china, Darwin, France, Gastro Adventuring, Italy, Lake District National Park, Over 50s, Over 50s Adventure Holidays, Persia, Perth, Po Valley, Robin Hood's Bay, round the world, RTW, Small Group Holidays, St Bees, tailor made holidays, The Silk Road, UK

Since when did the over 50s take adventure holidays you sprightly athletes might ask? Well, even if you think they don’t, trust me, they do! And many of them are fitter than you!

Over 50s do take adventure holidays! Image: Flickr/ mckaysavage

There’s a whole generation of walkers, climbers, mountaineers and all-round adventurers leading the way – and an exceptionally fit group of people over 50 putting you youngsters to shame.

There’s long-term adventureres who wouldn’t be seen dead wasting good walking time on sunloungers, family types who now have the time to go it alone, and the insatiably curious who still like the taste of adventure.

Here are five great options for people who prefer the call of the wild to DIY and calling on relatives for summer snooze staycations.

read more

Top 10 active breaks for solo travellers

Dion Wick    ash, Top 10s     active holidays, adventure holidays, adventure holidays US, France, RTW, scotland, solo travel, Sweden

All your friends coupled up? Can’t find a single travel chum to get away with from the nine-to-five daily grind? An adventure on your lonesome may in fact be one of the most rewarding trips you’ll ever choose to do.

Chilling out near Stockholm Image: Helena Wahlman/imagebank.sweden.se

Going it alone may be slightly scary, but it’s guaranteed to be an unforgettable escape for all the right reasons. And operators have realised the demand for single persons is enormous, so today there is a huge amount of choice— and it’s increasing. Make sure you choose a trip where the itinerary and activities have been created especially for solo travellers with single rooms included in the price.

Whether you embrace the luxury of time alone or take comfort in numbers, we’ve rounded up the top 10 active breaks for solo travellers…

read more

5 reasons why you need travel, not Christmas

Mark Pawlak    ash     camping, kitesurfing, Kitesurfing Egypt, New Zealand, RTW, Spain, Travel, trekking, Walking, Xmas

If you’ve a travelling gene, every holiday is a chance to get away and Christmas is no exception. Now, if you’re living in the UK or northern Europe, it’s likely you’ve been waiting all year for that skiing or snowboarding holiday.

Can you spot Santa?

But, if you’ve needed thawing out since October and are dreaming of feeling the sun on your neck, you’ll be teasing yourself with trekking somewhere warm – or just going ‘random’ and rocking up at departures with half-baked plan and a dream…

So, here are 5 reasons why you need travel, not Christmas.

read more

Travel pictures and the worlds 10 best travel photography cities

Kerry Hetherington    ash     australia, England, Italy, japan, RTW, scotland, Spain, travel photography, travel pictures, united kingdom, US

There are thousands of places in the world you could grab travel pictures, but which cities offer up the best travel photography opportunities for the travel mad snapper/ photography mad traveller?

We are all travel photographers. Could be with a brand new DSLR, a happy snappy or an iPhone/ mobile phone; it’s still photography.

Have camera will travel, but where?

“You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things and organising them. You just have to care about what’s around you…” (Elliott Erwitt).

So, whether you want a great city scape, a beautiful sunset or a bustling restaurant, all corners of the globe can provide a multitude of opportunities to capture creative images.

Here’s my 10 best travel photography cities and top spots to get those shots (I’m sure there are many more!).

read more

We Love Travel Luggage – but why bother with a bag at all?

Jonathan Tait    trekkingholidays     adventure holidays, Adventure Sports Equipment, Overland holidays, RTW, RTW holidays, rucksacks, travel gear, Travel luggage, trekking, walking gear

Everyone needs travel luggage, right? But it’s not the most important gear you’ll need travelling around the world. Most travellers would consider the shoe an invaluable piece of equipment. They come in many forms, they make up an important piece of everyday life; they are our protection from everything that is discarded and our transport to new experiences.

Rucksacks and hats, but do you really need both? Image: Flickr/ ToddMorris

To me, the hat and the shoe are both essentials. Both are practical, both can be easy to transport depending on type. I once travelled with a fedora, which I crushed after a day in my care, yet it still stood the test of time and provided invaluable sun protection  - and a certain element of class.

This got me thinking: could you ever do away with travel luggage ? Seriously, could you go sans bag?

read more

Travel Laptops and Data Storage: How to keep those files safe.

Mark Pawlak    ash, Travel Gear     Apple, cloud computing, data storage, iCloud, Overlanding, portable hard drive, RTW, Travel, travel laptops, travel technology, trekking, USB stick

Having a problem at home with your computer is frustrating, but having one on the road is truly troubling. Where did those files go? Which version am I looking at? And worse of all, where the hell is my backup? Having one of the best travel laptops of 2011 won’t help you, and taking a tablet on your travels is no protection against a virus.

Here’s three ways to keep your files save when travelling.

Backup on-line

iCloud, the cloud solution from Apple

Travelling with a cloud over your head need not be a bad thing… If you’ve still to get to grips with the concept of cloud computing, then here’s where the penny might drop. The cloud is online space. It’s a place where software can be hosted which ‘is in the cloud’, but more importantly it’s where your data can live. Google Docs works well, we love Dropbox (looks like any other folder on your computer) and there’s iCloud from the ever clever Apple people, to name just a few.

read more