Around the world adventures of someone “not well travelled”

Guest Post from Jacqueline Wilkinson

I’ve always considered myself “not well travelled”. I was raised by a Dad whose strong mantra was “Why see any other country until you’ve seen all of your own?” and so all of our holidays were in England or Wales. (It turns out he was just waiting until my sister and I had flown the nest, as they suddenly started going on two foreign holidays a year after that!).

We never even made it to Scotland! Please don’t get me wrong; the UK has some fantastic holiday destinations and I cannot wait to get back to the Lake District as an adult, but when your high school best friends are going to Florida and Spain every year, while you go to Bognor and Bournemouth, it can make you feel a little less adventurous!

My first trip abroad was a 5-day camping trip with school to Rennes in Brittany, France in Year 9. I had to beg to go and it took the longest time for my parents to agree to it, but finally, they did and I still remember that trip. I have some clear memories of asking for a baguette in the campsite shop and wandering around Mont Saint-Michel, of the boy who got sunburnt because he could only reach the top and bottom of his back and wouldn’t let anyone do the middle for him.

I even remember watching 10 Things I Hate About You, which had only just come out, on the ferry home! My second was a long weekend in Paris for my 21^st birthday. My first Serious Boyfriend took me to see Greenday, only riots were going on in Paris that November and Greenday cancelled. Instead, we wandered around the city taking in the sights and feeling somewhat bemused by the military who were everywhere, all of whom looked to be about 15 or 16 and were carrying huge assault rifles. A very surreal experience.

Since then, I had the usual one holiday a year for the four years I was with Serious Boyfriend but all my travel plans dropped off when we split up. I was working in retail and living in a shared house, paying off debts from dropping out of university. I could barely scrape enough money together to eat, so the adventure was off the table for a while.

Until I met my now Ex-Husband.

I was so lucky to meet someone who had the same desire to see the world as me and who had the funds to do so. He helped me to get back on stable financial ground myself and, once money wasn’t an issue, there was no stopping us!

We pretty quickly got into a rhythm of four foreign trips a year; we would do a long weekend city break in February, we would pick a small country and explore the whole thing around the Easter Break, and we would do a cheap and cheerful short-haul holiday in July and we would do a long-haul holiday in September, always splitting this one into two sections, so we could visit a town/city with some of the local culture as well as the relaxing beach side of things. But we also did some bigger adventures.

For my 30^th birthday, he decided he wanted to take me to New York. Well, I was not going to say no to that! Except once we started planning, things escalated pretty quickly and we soon found ourselves planning a 16-day American East Coast road trip adventure that included Washington D.C., Niagara Falls, upstate New York, NYC, Hartford, Providence and Boston. Needless to say, it was the trip of a lifetime…..or so I thought!

Whilst I was planning the wedding, my Ex-Husband was planning the honeymoon. He was looking for some incredibly beautiful and memorable destination (we were thinking of the Maldives or Barbados) but the more we talked about various places, the more we wanted to see. It didn’t take long for us to decide that we wanted to take a sabbatical from work to go explore other cultures. He hated his job so outright quit.

I asked my Area Manager for the 6 months off. I remember the day she sat me down and said that she would not authorise 6 months, that she could only authorise 3, but that if I agreed to do that, she would fire me because this sounded like such an incredible adventure that I needed to do. She guaranteed that she would find something for me if I gave her a month’s notice of coming back and so I handed my notice in there and then.

Our honeymoon ended up being 10 days short of 7 months and we visited 20 countries, some of them twice like mainland USA and Hawaii, or visiting Mexico City, only to go to Cancun a few weeks later. There were, of course, ups and downs, but I have such amazing memories of all of it.

It was by far the most incredible experience I have ever had and am likely to ever have, in my life. I remember our last flight home from the Dominican Republic, connecting in Germany, crying in the terminal, because coming home was the last thing I wanted to do, trying so hard to convince my Ex-Husband to buy a ticket to anywhere and let us go around again. I failed.

So whilst I still consider myself “not well travelled”, I have been on 6 of the 7 continents, I have seen 6 of the 7 Wonders Of The Modern World and I have seen at least one part of 15% of the countries in the world (thank you to the Been app, for calculating that for me). Only 85% more to go!

I guess what I would like to say is simple – travel. Anywhere, everywhere, whenever and however you can. There is a truly fascinating world filled with other cultures and ways of living out there and it is calling out to be explored and learnt about. I know so many people who say they can’t afford to, but not every trip has to be a two-week holiday with first-class flights to an all-inclusive 5⭐ Insta-famous destination. There are deals to be had all the time and your money will take you much further in some countries than it will in others.

There is an anonymous quote that says “travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer” and I could not agree with it more. Get out there and explore. I promise you won’t regret it.

A massive thanks to Becky for letting me take over and unleash my suppressed inner writer!

Jax x