Hebrides campervan overnight parking

Everyone knows that wild camping in Scotland is legal, but it’s not quite the same rules if you’re travelling in a vehicle. Whether you’re sleeping in your car, a motorhome or a campervan, you must sleep in either a paid campsite or a designated free overnight spot whilst in the Outer Hebrides.

Whatever you do, don’t park overnight on the machair. Machair is low lying arable land formed near the coast by the deposition of sand and shell fragments by the wind, and is found all over the Outer Hebrides although it is one of the most fragile and rare environments in Europe. In simple terms, don’t park up on verges or grass-like areas.

You’ll notice that availability of designated free overnight areas varies massively throughout the islands. For example, South Uist didn’t have any of these on it, North Uist had one or two and Harris (which is a lot smaller than the Uist’s) had at least 6.

The view from our van window at Clachan Sands

Here are our favourite ones:

1) Clachan Sands, North Uist

Follow a gravel track off the main road for a mile or so - it can be quite bumpy at times so take it slow - and you’ll find this haven which feels like the edge of the world. There’s a suggested donation of £10 per night per vehicle, bins and fresh water provided too. There’s room for lots of vehicles here, but getting flat ground is more tricky.

Our van parked up at Clachan Sands

2) West Harris Trust camping spot 3, close to Luskentyre beach, Harris

In West Harris there are several designated overnight spots for vehicles and this one was walking distance from beautiful Luskentyre beach, cake shed and beach hut as well as having a lovely view of the sea inlet. There’s only room for 4 vehicles here, so you may have to park up early.

3) Cliff Beach car park, Cliff, Lewis

A beautiful park up on Cliff beach with stunning views and room for about 7 vehicles. You can walk from here to the Cliff Art Studio and round the headland to Reef beach, or go for a swim in the sea in the sheltered bay at Cliff beach. Or you can simply enjoy the views of Cliff beach from your van. Spoilt for choice.

Cliff beach

4) North Harris Eagle Observatory car park, Harris

This was a simple car park park-up, with room for about 6 vans lower down and a further 2 or 3 on the higher up gravelled area. With easy access to Hushinish beach and also to the Eagle Observatory, this location was great for us and we had a quiet night there with a few other vans.

The Eagle Observatory

5) Melbost beach car park, Stornaway, Lewis

More practical than beautiful, this car park is level hard standing ground with room for about 5 motorhomes. There was a toilet here which was open all night as well as fresh water available around the back of the block. There is access to Melbost beach and it is only a 5 minute drive from Stornaway so perfect for city exploring. When we stayed here we were lucky enough to see the Northern Lights!

Sustainable travel: How to do it and how housesitting fits in

This blog post is about sustainable travel. Things like overtourism, under tourism, disaster tourism, what places to avoid and go, and how housesitting can fit in with these ideas.

Sustainable travel means travelling in a way that is less harmful to the environment and is more natural and ecological, in keeping with the environment. To travel sustainably is to fully consider climate change, environmental pollution and community impact in each destination and to assess whether our journey to that place will be positive or negative. It means being thoughtful about location, transport methods, types of accommodation, where we eat and when we travel.

At a talk I visited in 2022, Chris Haslam, chief travel writer for the Sunday Times said that the quickest way to become a sustainable traveller was to “Fly less, stay longer, and leave it better than when you arrived”.

Everyone can make a positive impact on a place whether that simply means supporting local food producers and restaurants, or spending a day or two volunteering in the community, or doing a few hours of litter picking with your family. At the very least, travelling in a sustainable way means leaving “no trace” that you’ve visited – no litter or physical impact on the landscape, never flying somewhere that can be accessed easily by overland travel, and never visiting places that have been listed as vulnerable or that have ecosystems that need protection.

Us western tourists have a bit of a reputation for discovering sun-drenched unspoilt destinations and commandeering them to become a hub for western holidaymakers. The influx of people to these destinations increases the amount of flights there which in turn makes airfares cheaper, and so we book to go there more frequently. Increased competition often also means that food and drink becomes cheaper. This cycle of over tourism can be the systematic ruining of a place – as seen in places such as Benidorm in Spain, some parts of Bali in Indonesia, Maya Beach in Thailand, and Santorini in Greece. In all of these places, it is easier to meet another tourist rather than a local.

The increase in traffic, air travel and cruise ships causes air pollution, landfill sites struggle, and things such as increased sewage waste, sun cream leaching, water sports, and boat anchors, cause water pollution and damage to coral reefs. A lot of these places lose their charm as a result. So whether you are staycationing or travelling abroad, consider seeking housesits in less touristic places. For example, instead of visiting Cornwall that tends to be busy all year round, consider the Northumberland coast – all the bang, without the buck, and without the people too!

Places that have had their ecosystems badly damaged due to global warming or over-tourism should be left alone so that they can recover; for example, the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in Australia whose coral bleaching is a direct result of the rise in sea water temperatures. A distressing report conducted in 2022 stated that 91% of the reefs on the GBR were affected by a mass event of coral bleaching that year. Another example of the damaging impact of over-tourism is Maya Bay beach in Thailand, famous for being “The Beach” from the film of the same name starring Leonardo Di Caprio. Due to extreme rubbish building up, coral reef decaying, and native wildlife retreating from the area, the Thai authorities decided to close the beach entirely in 2018. The beach was initially supposed to be closed for four months only, but due to the lockdowns it was actually closed for four years. Native wildlife returned in abundance, and now the coral reef is blooming and rare wildlife species have re-appeared.

This beach has now reopened to tourists, and hopefully tourist visits will now be arranged in a more controlled and sustainable way that respects the fragile environment there.

Even Mount Everest has been affected by over-tourism. This has led to overcrowding, safety issues, and a rubbish problem close to the summit – as the famous 2019 photo showed.

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You may have recently heard that an area is struggling due to under-tourism, and this may be a good reason to travel there on holiday and look for housesits there too. Sri Lanka is one such country that has found it difficult to bounce back from the knock-on effects not only of the pandemic but also the political tensions within the country which has meant that many countries’ foreign offices have advised their citizens not to travel there in recent years. However, this advice has now lifted and the country is now considered a safe destination; you will likely find that long-abandoned local tour guides, restaurant owners, and hotel staff eagerly await your return to the island nation.

The term “disaster tourism” has negative connotations with critics using it to apply to tourists who have a voyeuristic fascination with other people’s misfortune. However, consider the impact on local economies of the slump in tourism during these times. Regions hit by phenomena such as cyclones, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, landslides and avalanches often find that they are doubly punished; firstly by the disaster itself, and secondly by the immediate cessation of tourists. If they rely on the latter, they often struggle for years after the disaster zone has been restored.

For example, it was estimated that the wildfires in Australia a few years ago cost the tourism industry in that country something in the region of 4.5 billion dollars. So once an area is considered safe by the foreign office, you could consider a trip there. You will find that during these times, prices of both travel and accommodation are cheaper and the locals are more grateful for your visit. Not only that, but you will also be making a direct impact on the economic growth and regeneration of the place.

You could also combine your trip with some volunteering in these areas, such as rebuilding homes or clearing debris. In the case of man-made disasters such as biological or chemical threats, terrorist attacks or other civil unrest it may of course take some time before a place is safe to visit. In the case of Chernobyl, for example, it is permitted to visit the area but, due to the ongoing radiation emitted, may not be safe for those already suffering from certain health issues.

Of course these decisions are always a personal choice and need to be carefully made according to your own circumstances. A personal experience of this for us was in the summer 2015 when we had a holiday booked to Tunisia. Just before our trip there were two incidents quite close together of mass shootings; one in Tunis and one on the beach near to Sousse. Our holiday was booked one hour north of the beach where the shootings took place. Did this worry us? A little. Did we go? Yes. We knew that two attacks so close together indicated growing political tension in the country. However, we also knew that cancelling the trip would be what most people would do, and that the impact of this on the local communities that relied on tourists would be devastating. We took a tour of the country whilst there and the tour guide told us the direct impact on the local people that the reduced tourism had made. People were struggling to buy food for their families as their main source of income had vanished overnight.

When thinking about “disaster tourism” or visiting a place that has been in the news for negative reasons, there is no heroism in making the decision to travel there, just as there is no weakness in changing your travel destination to somewhere else. Make sure that the decisions you make are the right ones for you and your loved ones.

Considering when to travel to a destination can make a difference to the impact your visit will have on a place, as well as your experience of it. The most sensible way to think about this question is to think of another; when can you give back the most to a community living in a certain place? One answer is to avoid travelling at times when the place will be at its busiest.

For example, if you see a housesit near Hyde Park when Winter Wonderland is on, you can be sure there will be crowds and chaos; this may be something you want to do, or something you’d rather avoid. If you feel that other areas of the UK may benefit from tourism at that particular time of the year instead, then look for housesits there. A great feature of most housesitting sites is that you can search for housesits in specific places, there is a map view so you can see what housesits are out there.

In the case of certain destinations that are overrun with tourists at certain times of the year such as Rome in August, New York at Christmas, the French Alps in February, and the Lake District on Easter weekend (you get the idea) – try looking for housesits off-season, or looking for more unknown places. Busy doesn’t always mean a thriving economy for the locals; it can actually cripple their way of living as they have to rely on the tourist income earned in just a few short weeks or months of the year. It also means that locals are pushed out of their own neighbourhoods as tourism increases the price of properties, and hotels are built instead of residential housing.

The main things that we want when we go on holiday is hot weather and relaxation, and the weather also tends to be the best throughout the typical summer months of July and August. Shoulder seasons can be a winning solution here, when weather is still warm, crowds are lessened and prices to travel and stay are lower.

In Europe, this tends to mean booking holidays between early April-early June and early September-late October. Destinations that are notoriously busy in summer months tend to struggle throughout winters and shoulder-season periods; they make all their money in a couple of months and have to survive the rest of the year on it.

Travelling outside the normal tourist season means you can improve their livelihood and enable them to be more stable year-round. You will also have a fuller understanding of the place you visit as you will see it outside of the tourist season. You will undoubtedly face some differences in your holidays due to this change; the weather may be less predictable and you may find certain bars or restaurants are closed. However, the best holidays are ones where you take an unexpected route or do something different to what you’d normally do.

Visiting a ski resort in the middle of summer might sound like madness, but there will be fantastic hiking, mountain biking and paragliding. And how about a beach holiday in winter; try cooking classes, star gazing and spa days to warm you up! All it takes is a little creative thinking outside of the usual summer-holiday box.

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Housesitting inherently fits into the slow and sustainable remit. Staying for extended periods of time in a person’s home, means a lower carbon footprint from travel – and if you can get there by train or ferry, or car-share, then all the better. Staying longer will also offset slightly the need to drive if it’s a rural location or if you have luggage. And the fact that housesitting essentially provides you with free accommodation, means that you can spend some of the money that you have saved on accommodation on slower means of getting there!

By searching for available housesits in the map view on your app, you can plan to move just small distances between sits – which means you’ll get to know the area even better, and makes the journeys that much easier to keep. We started housesitting in the North Cotswolds, and we are from Gloucester originally, so we began our journey only an hour from our home. From there, we moved around the UK, usually only travelling for an hour or two between sits. We will continue to travel in this way, strategically planning our movement to places that may or may not already be on our list of places to see (which is pretty much everywhere in the world).

Slow travel means more interaction with local communities, and housesitting means that you will naturally interact far more with the local community than you would have done had you stayed in a hotel. When you housesit, you are engaging with the local community from the instant you reach out to someone who needs their home and pets looked after. Use this person as a valuable resource; they can introduce you to the neighbours, and they can tell you about that tucked-away gem of a restaurant, or the local farmer/grower who sells their fresh veg on-site on Saturday mornings. They can also let you know about local volunteering projects that they are involved in, and/or that you could get involved with during your stay.

Other options that might provide you with valuable cultural exchange include joining in with local exercise classes and speaking to other attendees. Chat with the locals to find out more about what’s going on in the area, and, if abroad, practice your language skills!

The longer you stay, the more you will feel the benefit of being more integrated in the community and of seeing the area through the eyes of a resident rather than a tourist. The process of unpacking and packing back up can be stressful and a longer stay minimises the time spent doing that. We are currently aiming to conduct housesits of around one month in length minimum – we feel this is a good amount of time to actively participate within the community and explore the surrounding walks on offer.

One argument against housesitting being sustainable is that you are not paying for your accommodation, so hotels, B&B’s and campsites in the area will not be benefiting from your custom. Yet, it’s also possible that you wouldn’t have visited that area at all if it wasn’t for housesitting, and you will still be putting money back into the area by buying at local shops and eating at local restaurants. Although money might not be being put into accommodation by your visit, you are still spending money within the area.

Supporting local businesses such as locally-run independent restaurants, farm shops, cafés and gift shops, is a great way to do this. The money you have saved on accommodation can not only by invested in slower ways of travel, but can also be invested in the often pricier, but more sustainable, local food options. When you are eating or buying food, speak to the staff about the items, whether the ingredients are fresh and local, and if so, where exactly they are from. Take an interest in food miles and zero waste policies that businesses may have. If they are doing it, they will be keen to talk to you about it and will most likely be wanting to communicate about it on their menus and signage. Saving money on accommodation also means having more money to spare for supporting local amenities such as national parks, activity centres and other unique local experiences; you’ll have a richer and more varied experience than you otherwise would have.

I hope that’s helped you think a bit more about what sustainable travel is, how you can do it without too much difficulty and how housesitting fits in with it all.

Can housesitting work for everyone?

This blog post is all about the big question – Is housesitting really for everyone?

I did a lot of thinking about this when writing this chapter of The Housesitter’s Guide to the Galaxy – chapter 6 by the way. I thought of all the different kinds of people in the world, what they may prioritise, what they may want out of life, and whether housesitting might be something that they could try and that they would enjoy.

Obviously, if you don’t like animals, it’s going to be quite hard for you to give housesitting a go – but not impossible – as some housesits posted on various websites don’t have pets that need looking after and the homeowners simply want someone to tend to the garden and plants and having someone in the house will act as a security mechanism too. So it’s not a no if you don’t like pets, there are just less sits available without pets, so competition is higher.

If you do like pets however, good news, housesitting can probably work for you in some shape or form. I do go on a bit to everyone I know about how they should try housesitting, but it’s because I truly believe that it can work for everyone.

Whether you prefer rural locations, city breaks, beach-front stays or mountain chalets, there are housesits in all locations across the globe. On some websites, such as Trusted Housesitters, you can filter by location and select “Beach, City, Countryside or Mountains” when you search for sits which is a great feature if you’re picky on the landscape you’ll be sitting in. Obviously you can also search by village, town or city too, as well as using the map feature to see what sits are available.

Although me and Tom do housesitting full time as it works so well for our lifestyle, you may want to try housesitting for shorter trips such as weekends away or holidays that you use your annual leave for. It’s a great solution to going on holiday and being able to keep costs down. It’ll give you more funds to spend on an amazing experience whilst away or simply more beers on the beach. There are housesits available everywhere, and some with very low maintenance pets such as indoor cats that only need to be fed, kept company some of the time and their litter tray emptied. You could go to New York city and stay in Manhattan in a beautiful apartment with a cat just like this, exploring the city just as you would have done if you stayed in a hotel – only you’ve secured FREE accommodation!

So even if you don’t want to or don’t have the lifestyle to try out housesitting full time, housesitting on your holidays can work really well too. We actually started housesitting on our weekends off work in areas in the UK as a sort of ‘mini-break’. We couldn’t believe how easy it was, and that it was free. I’m still not over it now really. 

I’m gonna take a second to mention people working from home as well as digital nomads. A digital nomad is someone who works remotely and has no fixed location – they move around from place to place – like me and Tom. A homeworker is someone who works from home and doesn’t move around. Their work may be flexible and allow them to work from home sometimes and in the office at other times, or they may not even have offices they can go into. A lot more people began working from home throughout the covid-19 pandemic and some never went back to the offices, with companies shutting them down and reducing their overheads massively.

Both types of remote worker could marry their lifestyles up with housesitting and benefit massively from reduced costs such as rent and utility bills. If you’re not into travelling or moving around all the time, you can look for longer housesits – I’ve seen some on Trusted Housesitters up to five years long! Which means you could work from their home and save money, without many major changes – perhaps a change in location initially and then you can stay put for a longer time.

Or, if you love moving around and your work don’t mind you being on the go sometimes, you could use housesitting just like we are and work whilst you hop between places – beach front villa one month, countryside village home the next. It’s a great way to see the world whilst keeping your career and some financial stability. The main thing you need to check before agreeing to a housesit is the wi-fi strength and speed, as well as making sure there’s not so many pet and household responsibilities that it will be difficult to do your job at the same time. There’s a full chapter dedicated to Digital Nomad’s and Homeworker’s in The Housesitters Guide to the Galaxy.

Let’s talk about your tribe now. Are you solo? A couple? A family? A group of friends? Do you have your own pet with you? A young adult or a retiree?

I’ve spoken to many different people who do housesitting full or part time, and they come in every shape and size there is. There really is no hard and fast rule as to whether housesitting will work for you and your group. Discuss housesitting with everyone and make sure that no one is making huge compromises to try it out.

For the solo traveller, housesitting may be a little more isolating than staying in a hostel or hotel, as there are less chances to randomly interact with others. If you are an introvert, this may not bother you, but consider whether you’ll find it difficult to do full time – you could do a mix of housesitting and hostelling instead. Housesitting does immediately connect you to one or two people however – the homeowner. So you can pump them for information on the area such as safety, emergency procedures, things to do and see and anyone in the area they could connect you with if your sit is long term. When we were in Spain last year the homeowner introduced us to a friend before she left and gave me the number of another friend too, I met both these women for coffee and lunch throughout our 6 week sit in rural Spain. The fact that they spoke English was so nice in a town where none of the locals did.

If you’re trying housesitting as a group such as a couple or a group of friends, consider everyone’s needs before agreeing to a housesit. You may find the idea of being on a remote desert island exhilarating and adventurous, but if your partner needs stable Wi-Fi for work or your friend can’t swim then it’s not going to go down very well with them. Travelling as a group always requires a little compromise from everyone to make things work. You may decide that one of the couple will do more of the house and pet care chores as the other one works longer hours. You may find that you’re very go with the flow and your friends are more picky so you let them apply to any sit they like the look of. Whatever your vibe, communication with your travel buddies is key to make housesitting as a group or couple work well.

If you’re a family who are giving housesitting a go, it’s going to be more hard work, but it can be very rewarding. It may be more mentally and physically tiring doing a housesit with children but they are very resilient and can thrive in the right conditions whilst travelling. Prioritising their development and education is key if you’re going to try housesitting full time, as you’ll probably be home schooling them yourself whilst getting them involved in home and pet chores at the housesit. Finding the solution that works best for your children first before trying housesitting will probably be best for you. Looking for longer sits may also help as your children can settle into an area and make friends there – by longer sits I’m talking one year plus, and if that’s the case you could also enrol them in the local school if they want to do that. If you want to do housesitting for short breaks away or in the school holidays, there’s less to consider and more fun to be had – they can get their hands dirty mucking out chickens and ducks, groom and ride horses and play with dogs and cats. They could learn about growing vegetables and looking after plants or crops. They’ll see each place you housesit with new eyes and may benefit from things you don’t have at home such as more land, tennis courts, swimming pools and so on.

Travelling with your own pet is more difficult but it can be done. Some websites such as Mindahome have a filter that you can select to find sits where the homeowner doesn’t mind you bringing your own pet. This saves you the faff of applying and asking the homeowner via message if they mind. I would say that if you’re going to take your own pet to housesits, it’s better to apply for ones near to where you’re currently based. This way you can suggest to the homeowner that the pets meet each other before the sit to check they get on ok – a great way to secure sits if you travel with your own pet. You can also look for sits that don’t have any pets so that you don’t have to worry about the dynamics of the pets interacting with each other.

A great feature available through Trusted Housesitters is the Forum. Once you’re a member of the website, whether homeowner or housesitter, you get access to the forum. This is a great resource if you have any questions or concerns, before during or after a sit. There are threads on there that have hundreds of replies, and you can almost bet that your question has been posted on there before, so you can use the search bar to look for topics you’re interested in. It’s also a great way to connect with other people that do housesitting or other homeowners if you’re a pet parent. There’s a book club on the forum which I’m a part of and The Housesitter’s Guide to the Galaxy has been selected as the read for May.

I hope this short blog post has helped you discover that housesitting really can work for everyone - groups of all shapes and sizes can benefit from free accommodation and the opportunity to travel the world, one house at a time.

The pro’s & con’s of housesitting

This post is all about the pro’s and con’s of housesitting – common issues, benefits and perks and things you should consider before housesitting full or part time. I’ll go into any issues we’ve had or have heard about other sitter’s having, as well as the benefits and perks we get from our housesitting lifestyle.

Let’s start with some of the obvious pro’s..

You get to travel the world at your own pace virtually for free!

Housesitting allows you to travel and visit other places by staying in other people’s homes and looking after their pets. It’s practically free because you don’t pay any accommodation or utility bill fees, so your only overhead would be the membership fee of around £120 a year (£199 for premium on Trusted Housesitters), as well as food, bills you have such as a mobile phone bill, transport costs and any activities you want to do.

We’ve found housesitting the best way for us to travel, continue working full time and be able to save money towards epic trips we want to take in the future – African safari’s coming soon…

Another pro of housesitting which stems from this is financial freedom. We finally feel able to buy things we want to – super duper running clothes for Tom, or yoga gear for me, and neither of us feel guilty spending the money. We’ve earnt it after all.

Another huge positive is that our environmental impact has lessened since we started housesitting – we now stay in one place for longer meaning less physical travel and less carbon emissions released. We’re able to shop local and reduce our food miles as well as support local businesses. We travel over land between sits and try not to fly at all.

Our personal health and wellbeing has improved tenfold since we started housesitting full time. Slower travel and financial security has allowed us to feel more relaxed than ever in our travels – taking our time to get to know smaller places we’d never have otherwise visited, as well as spending time with animals and in nature more than ever. Our physical and mental health are in great form as we now have the time to prioritise the things we never could before such as going to the gym or local exercise classes, walking more, eating healthier foods and interacting with locals.

Housesitting can enable you to work on your career if it’s something you can do remotely such as Tom’s work, or to try something that you’ve wanted to do for a long time – I had always wanted to give writing a go but I never thought I’d be here, with a published book and many articles written for magazines, working away on book number 2.  Because of the financial freedom it provides, by trying housesitting you could reduce your outgoings so much that you may be able to quit that job that isn’t quite allowing you to flourish and look for something that you can do remotely and feels more “you”.

One of the biggest gifts that housesitting has given us so far is time. We simply feel as though we have more time. More time together, more time to explore the place we’re visiting, more time to work on ourselves and our goals, more time to plan our adventures, more time in nature, more time to spend with family and friends whom we often invite to stay with us at housesits, more time to enjoy each day. Because of the slower pace of life and longer housesits that we’ve chosen to go for, we’ve been able to maximise our use of time and spend less time working and more time playing.

My favourite ‘pro’ of housesitting is without doubt the time we get to spend with animals by looking after people’s pets. I’ve always been an animal lover and I find great comfort and solace in pets – bonding with them very quickly and enjoying every second I spend looking after them whether that’s walking them, mucking them out, feeding them, playing with them, making funny meme’s of them, whatever it is, I love it. Animals are so pure and loving, all they want to do is spend time with you.

Starting off the con’s whilst on this subject I’d have to say one of things I find hardest about housesitting is leaving the pets behind – even though I know they’ll be overjoyed to be reunited with their owner, it’s a little bit of heartbreak each time I leave a sit.

Another thing you need to think about before you go full time with housesitting is that you’ll need to lug your stuff around between sits. This is another reason we love a longer housesit, it’s less packing and unpacking. If you do lots of shorter sits you may find that living out of a bag becomes a bit tedious. You could consider going minimalist and getting rid of anything that isn’t essential.

The main downside of housesitting is that things can and do go wrong, so you always need to have a backup plan. For example, we were doing a 2 month sit in Vienna recently and the homeowner decided to come home 9 days earlier than agreed – not for any emergency or issue, she simply decided that’s what she was doing. We were, in effect, evicted. We had already booked our overland travel back to the UK which couldn’t be amended and was very expensive so we ended up having to pay for our own apartment for the 9 days, which cost around £400.

We always make sure we have some savings available for emergencies like this where we may need to cover our own accommodation costs for a while. As the process is a trust exchange there are no formal contracts in place and so having a backup plan – such as savings, or a family member or friend whom you can stay with at short notice – is always a good idea. We also have our motorhome which we can stay in when needed between sits.

Other issues we’ve encountered whilst housesitting include difficulties getting doctor’s appointments – both in the UK and overseas. We’ve also had dental emergencies and struggled to get dental appointments overseas. One time, we made complete arses of ourselves and only realised mid-sit that we didn’t have travel insurance, so had to pay a huge amount to take it out whilst already travelling.

Obviously you need to research things much more thoroughly if you’re going to start doing international housesits such as visas, vaccinations and customs. We’ve mainly only had issues on sits when we’ve been abroad.

A big thing to consider, and the last thing I’ll discuss with you today, is that some sits are quite hard work. If you’re working full time, maybe don’t apply to a sit with 5 dogs, 2 cats, chickens and horses. You’ll be working every second of the day doing all the “chores” that come with that many pets. Sometimes pets are more difficult to look after than the homeowner made out – this has happened on a few occasions to us, both in the UK and abroad.

For example, a homeowner may say that their dog is “energetic” or “people-loving” but what these terms really mean is something much different. Energetic probably means a pet that cannot be tired out and will not chill in the evenings. People-loving almost always means that that pet doesn’t like other animals! Be wary of these terms when you read a profile of a sit.

I hope this blog post has helped you see a bit more into the world of housesitting and given you some insight to the pro’s and con’s of living this way ‘full time’.

Marrakesh to London over land

Why travel over land across such a big distance when you can fly?

I have a lot of different answers to this question. Number one is that it releases less carbon as opposed to flying. Number two is that it makes the journey more of an adventure, and I’m always down for that. Number three is because I could. Number four would be that I had wanted to do some solo travelling and the length of the journey would give me some “down time” which I was looking forward to. Number five: Who wouldn’t want to try and cross between two continents - Africa and Europe - over land? The scenery was incredible.

This blog is about the route I took, how I booked it, and the experience of crossing two mighty continents by land.

The route: Marrakesh to London

Transport: Trains, taxi and ferry

Distance: 1431 miles / 2303 km as the crow flies

Carbon emissions: Approx. 40kg CO2e (versus 250kg CO2e on a one way flight)

Travel time: 76 hours

Cost: £347.50

Journey:

1. Train from Marrakesh to Casablanca

2. Train from Casablanca to Tangier

3. Taxi from Tangier railway station to Tanger Med port

4. Ferry from Tanger Med port to Barcelona

5. Train from Barcelona to Narbonne

6. Sleeper train from Narbonne to Paris

7. Eurostar from Paris to London

How it came about that I was travelling this route:

Tom told me he had a work meeting in Marrakesh. “Marrakesh?!” I said.. “I’ve always wanted to go”. Cue pouting face and sad eyes. I knew I couldn’t stay with him and join his conference, so I decided that I’d go with him for the journey and stay in my own place, exploring the city at leisure. We had been housesitting in southern Spain, close to Seville, and it made sense for us to travel to Marrakesh over land as it would be far less carbon emissions and a similar amount of time for the journey.

When it came to travelling home, I decided to stick to my eco guns and try to get back to the UK over land. Tom had to get back to the UK for work and so he flew back. I was nervous and excited at the prospect of travelling so far on my own across Africa and Europe. Whilst in Marrakesh I researched the route and began booking my travel.

I had done the journey from the UK to Barcelona by land before, and the trains to Marrakesh from Tangier, so I knew some of the route already. I would go by train from Marrakesh back to Tangier, and then I needed to search for ferry crossings that would take me to Europe and weren’t too expensive. There were lots of crossings from Tangier-ville port to Tarifa and Algeciras in Spain but not great rail or bus connections between those locations and Barcelona for me to continue my travels.

It was then that I noticed that if I departed from Tanger Med port instead of Tangier-ville, the ferry company GNV ferries (https://www.gnv.it/en) were operating a route that went all the way to Barcelona on a 30 hour crossing for just £75 per person. I booked the ferry, and then began booking my trains around it.

In total, pre-travel, I booked:

1. Train from Marrakesh to Casablanca, 20/09/23, 07:50 - 10:28

2. Train from Casablanca to Tangier, 20/09/23, 11:00 - 13:10

   First two trains booked together cost a total of 198 DH (approx £15.50)

3. Ferry from Tanger Med port to Barcelona, 21/09/23, 00:30 - 11:00 on 22/09/23, £75

4. Train from Barcelona to Narbonne, 22/09/23, 16:34 - 18:33, £80

5. Sleeper train from Narbonne to Paris, 22/09/23, 20:43 - 06:33, £62

6. Eurostar from Paris to London, 23/09/23, 10:07 - 11:30, £115

I was to leave Marrakesh early on Wednesday 20th September, and all being well I would arrive in the UK on Saturday 23rd September late morning.

Websites used to book travel:
https://www.gnv.it/en - for the ferry
https://www.eurostar.com/uk-en - for the Eurostar
https://www.oncf.ma/en/Home - for the Moroccan trains
https://www.thetrainline.com/ - for all other trains

The journey:

I could’ve had a better start to my day on 20th September, but as it was I’d been up all night with severe food poisoning causing sickness, diarrhoea and stomach cramps. I’d never had such bad food poisoning. Just my luck right?

Tom was trying to convince me to abandon my over-land travel plans and get a flight back with him later that day as I was so poorly. However, I knew there was no way I could deal with the civilised and regulated queuing and conformity of travel by plane, along with the dreaded seatbelt sign, when I was constantly to and from the bathroom. I’d take my chances with the Moroccan railways instead.

He walked me to the train station in Marrakesh, and off I went on the 07:50 service to Casablanca, running on time. The chairs weren’t very comfortable but all I cared about was the passing of time and the hope that I may improve as it did so. I have to admit here, that I was sick a couple of times in the bathroom on this train. It was horrendous, as the toilet bowl merely opened up below onto the tracks. Talk about leaving your mark on a place. Sorry Morocco!

Train 1 of the journey, Marrakesh - Casablanca

The first train passed quickly, and then I was at Casablanca, where I popped to use a stationary toilet and wished I hadn’t - the queues were horrendous! I only just made it back to the platform by 11am, the supposed time of departure. We waited, and waited, and eventually around 11:30am the train rolled in to take us onwards to Tangier. Luckily I wasn’t in a rush as the ferry didn’t depart until midnight.

Train 2, Casablanca to Tangier

On this train the seats were much more comfortable, and I managed to keep a little bit of water down, so it was a great success compared to the first service. We arrived in Tangier around 13:30 so only 20 minutes late. I still felt ill, but I thought that I might be hungry later on so I bought a sandwich to take with me to the ferry terminal, unsure of what awaited me there.

As the Tanger Med port was around an hour from the centre of Tangier, I decided to get a taxi there. Leaving the train station I found the taxi rank but everyone I asked to take me there waved me away or drove off, stating they only did short local trips. A Moroccan girl approached me and said she could help - there were other taxi drivers around the corner which the locals used and were much cheaper and would take me to the port. I agreed to go with her as she was nice and friendly.

We walked around five minutes to the side of the train station and down a small ramshackle road where there were indeed several cars and drivers waiting. Most of them were out of their cars, chatting away and having small coffees whilst waiting for customers. I saw some locals come and be driven away whilst here. The girl explained, in Arabic, where I wanted to go and for how much. The men replied and there was some excitable back and forth conversation between them - all in Arabic, so I couldn’t understand what was being said.

At the end of their conversation, the girl said that they were willing to take me to the Tanger Med port for a small amount of Dirham’s (around £5). I had been expecting to pay approx. £30/40 due to the distance involved. I was shocked at the price she told me and said they must think it’s the closer port. She checked with them and then told me that they knew where to go, it was around an hour away.

Around this time, I started to get a weird vibe. I felt on edge and I wasn’t quite sure why. As they say - my spidey senses were tingling. I trust my gut completely and so I took a second and said to the girl I wasn’t sure about going with them. She tried to reassure me but by now I had decided it didn’t feel right and I didn’t want to go with the man. Once I’ve made a decision, I don’t usually waver. Confident in trusting my gut feeling, I told the girl I was going back to the official taxi rank by the station and apologised to the man in broken Arabic. They looked very annoyed.

I turned and walked away, quickly getting back to the main taxi rank and immediately flagging down an official taxi. The driver spoke great English and said he could take me to the port for £30 - a price I was willing to pay for a legitimate journey with a man I could converse with. As I was getting into the taxi, the man from the unofficial taxi rank came to the door and started having a heated discussion with the driver in Arabic. After a few minutes of them going back and forth, my new taxi driver told me that the man was annoyed and that I owed him the price for a coffee. I gave this willingly - although baffled as to how I owed him for a coffee! - and then we departed with gusto.

The journey was beautiful. The driver put on an English news channel for me and opened the windows to let the breeze in. It was around 30 degrees Celsius and very hot, so this was really appreciated. We went the scenic route, as I wasn’t in a rush, and the driver let me decide which way. I said I wanted to see the sea. Boy, did he oblige. The views were incredible over Tangier and the sea beyond.

I arrived at the Tanger Med port at around 4pm. The place is huge. Full of shipping containers, freight and cargo ships as well as a few passenger ferries which were also huge. It wasn’t clear where I had to go but I got out of the taxi and asked a few officials whom pointed me in the direction of the passenger terminal.

Tanger Med port

The GNV desk was closed so I sat down for an hour or so, and when it opened they gave me my tickets, checked me in and told me that it would be quite a long wait and to get some food/drinks from the cafeteria upstairs or the shops as they would be closed later on.

I still felt unwell but I had definitely improved since the morning so I began to try and rehydrate whilst resting and reading my book. Time felt as though it passed very slowly. I napped for a bit, got a bite to eat and finished my book. I thought there may be a waiting room to go into, but there wasn’t and the passenger terminal was cold due to the aircon.

Upstairs in the passenger terminal

Eventually midnight rolled around and they called all passengers for our ferry - there were only around 20 of us getting on as foot passengers, not many at all for such a big ship, but most were boarding via vehicle. We waited in the pre-boarding area for around 30 minutes, and at 00:30 we were allowed on board. We departed approx. 30 minutes late, but all I cared about now was sleep.

Boarding the ferry

I’d booked a bed in a 4-bed female only cabin. I’d booked a bottom bunk as I hate being on the top bunk. I arrived, found my bed, and another lady was already in the room unpacking in the bed opposite me. We got ready for bed, turned the light off, and I was just drifting off to sleep when someone arrived and turned the light on. Another lady was joining us. However, she was convinced that the person I was sharing with was in her bed. Now ensued a shouting match of epic proportions. The lady in bed refused to move. The lady who had just entered wanted the bed she’d booked (and rightly so). This was what I gleaned from the gestures, volume, tone and actions of the ladies, as you see, the argument was entirely in Arabic. I went to the bathroom and hoped they’d sort it out, but it was getting worse and worse.

Due to the level of illness I was dealing with, along with sleep deprivation from the night before and wanting to go immediately to bed, I marched to reception and asked for assistance. Someone came, but the fight did not diminish and only got worse. People in neighbouring cabins were coming out to listen and watch. I was so tired and poorly, I wanted to cry.

I went back to reception and asked them how much it would cost to upgrade to a private cabin. It would be 40 euros more. I willingly paid it and went back to the cabin to begin packing up my stuff, gesturing that the new addition could have my bunk in 5 minutes as I was leaving. That calmed the argument down. Once I got to my own cabin with en suite and closed the door, I was so relaxed and happy. I quickly slipped into a 12 hour coma. It was the best 40 euros I’ve ever spent.

Food counter on the ferry

The next day we had a full day on board the ship, so once I was up and dressed I explored the vessel, buying some food and drink and eating it slowly to see if it would go down ok. The sun was shining and I sat out on deck for a few hours reading a book. The Wi-Fi wasn’t working at all and I had no signal but it didn’t bother me at all as I quite enjoy being offline now and then. I had an afternoon nap, showered, ate some snacks I’d bought for the journey, and read some more.

The ferry I’d been on

In the evening I went back on deck for a few more hours, basking in the golden hour sun and watching the most magnificent sunset over the sea. I felt content. A lady let me use her phone as a hotspot as she had signal, so I could message Tom and my mum and tell them I was ok and that the Wi-Fi wasn’t working. I relaxed. I finished another book.

Arriving into Barcelona port at around 11am on the Friday morning, the sun was still out and the city, as always, was thriving. Once off the boat - they weren’t quite sure how to disembark foot passengers, so there was some waiting around before being ushered off and onto a bus to get to the customs and border office - we had our passports stamped very quickly and in the blink of an eye were in Spain and one of my favourite cities, Barcelona.

Barcelona

I had around 4 hours until my train to Narbonne but I had some work to do so I walked towards the station I’d be departing from (Barcelona Sants) which was around an hour by foot. I made sure to go up La Rambla and see some of the sights on the way. Once I was most of the way to Barcelona Sants I stopped in a shopping centre to use the Wi-Fi and finish a magazine article I was writing that I had a deadline for. Once that was done, I continued to the train station and had some lunch in a café there.

I actively dislike Barcelona Sants train station. I’ve been there several times before and every time it is an utter shit show. The process is disorganised, chaotic and stupid. The queues are endless and they don’t let you go down to the platform until the last minute which results in a lot of pushing and shoving. This time was no different, although I knew what to expect which made it less stressful.

Queues at Barcelona Sants pre-boarding

We departed on time and made our way to Narbonne, an uneventful train journey although my seat was very comfortable and the train was modern and high-speed. In just two hours we were in France, European rules meaning that we had no border stop or passport check.

Disembarking in Narbonne, I was disappointed that everything in the railway station was shut - including the shop, café and main toilets. With two hours to kill but feeling exhausted I decided to call my mum and have a chat with her instead. I also had a sandwich I’d bought in Barcelona so I had that for my dinner and awaited the sleeper train.

Sleeper train from Narbonne to Paris

It arrived a little late, though as sleeper trains rarely run on schedule this was not a surprise. On boarding I quickly found my cabin - I’d booked a bottom bunk in a 6 berth cabin. I was delighted that there was only one other girl joining me for now, and she also had a bottom bunk. We quickly made our beds and sorted our stuff out - I was pleasantly surprised to find not only was I provided with a pillow and sheet, there was a blanket, water bottle, eye mask and ear plugs. Very nice indeed.

My bed on the sleeper

We went to sleep and an hour or so later were joined by 3 more people in our cabin, they very noisy and slow at getting their beds sorted, much to mine and the other girls’ chagrin. Eventually things settled down and we all went to sleep. I slept very well on the sleeper, perhaps because I was exhausted, but it was comfy and a nice temperature (not too hot or too cold!) and the rhythmic rocking of the train on the tracks helped too.

I woke around 6am and started to get dressed as we’d soon be arriving into Paris Austerlitz station. We arrived on time and as I had a few hours until the Eurostar departed, I decided to walk to Gare du Nord (approx. 1 hour on foot). It was another beautiful day although a little cold due to the early hour. Having a breakfast of a croissant and coffee at the train station I reflected on my journey so far.

Gare du Nord

There had been a few mishaps, illness and delays, but mostly the journey had been smooth sailing. I’d really enjoyed it. Time alone to relax, reflect, reconnect with myself. Reading for leisure, eating when I felt like it, sleeping when I felt like it. Of course the journey had been somewhat long and uncomfortable, but it had been an adventure. Sunsets over the sea, deserts whipping past train windows, watching people go about their daily life. And now I was about to embark on the final step - the Eurostar to London.

On the Eurostar

I’ve done the crossing so many times I’ve lost count. It’s usually very smooth and well run and that day was no different. Before I knew it I was on board the Eurostar and crossing over back to my own country, the United Kingdom. I felt a rush of emotions when I arrived at St Pancras. I’ve got no idea why, as I’m often to and fro’ between the UK and Europe. Perhaps it was the enormity of the journey, the distance and length of time, the organisation and planning, or perhaps I was just tired.

It felt good to be home, and I appreciated it all the more because of the journey to get there.

Arriving in St Pancras

Adventures with anxiety: Take time to recover

Anyone who has anxiety will know that it is absolutely exhausting. Feeling on edge, worried and apprehensive saps your energy quicker than a blast of cardio. Understanding that you will need time to recover after you’ve had a bout of anxiety is the start of really getting to know your own mental health. Taking the time that your body and mind needs after a spell of anxiety is as important as rest and recovery after a physical exertion such as a run and, just like they say in the physical sense, is an important part of “training”.

The recovery period that you need will vary massively depending on how anxiety has affected you recently, how tired you may be, any other life factors or stresses such as work or family, your diet and – for women – whether you are on your period. All of these things can play havoc with your hormone levels and your ability to cope in certain situations. If you’ve been through a huge event like an anxiety or panic attack that has really knocked your confidence your recovery time is likely to be longer than someone who has experienced a short burst of anxious energy.

What to do to “recover”

Recovery is different for everyone. Some people will need to rest or sleep for a long period of time to reset their equilibrium. Others may feel the need to read, watch TV or exercise – distracting their mind for a while. Spending time with friends and family can really help during this period, especially if you can talk openly to them about your experiences and needs, and as long as they will provide you with comfort, not judgement.

It would be wise during this time to honour your body and mind – nourish yourself with good quality healthy foods, take time to stretch and do some gentle yoga, journal and do some meditation, have a bath or pamper yourself in some other way. Reacquainting with yourself in these fundamental and basic ways are vital to grounding back in.

Self soothe but don’t wallow

During this recovery time, you will need to learn to self soothe. This means looking after yourself and prioritising your needs without relying on others to do it for you. If you are in a relationship then it is important that you communicate to your partner what you are doing and why so that they don’t feel pushed away.

Self-soothing is a skill that will serve you well throughout your life once you’ve learnt how to do it effectively. It is a way to regulate your emotions and manage any distress that you have felt, from anxiety or any other experiences. The act of calming your nervous system in this way is something that you can take with you anywhere and can use when anxiety hits you out of the blue. You can try listening to music, breathing techniques, low lighting, aromatherapy, incense/candles, positive self-talk, physical contact with others or simply allowing yourself to have a good cry.  

Wallowing in your emotions is quite different to self-soothing. Wallowing is the act of allowing yourself to linger in certain emotions or a state of comfort or relaxation in an effort to hide from the world and your place in it. The emotions may be negative, and you may find yourself over-thinking those things that have already passed – words, actions, situations. Self soothing, however, is the act of attempting to understand your emotions in an enlightened way.

It's best to move past the wallowing stage – don’t get me wrong, you are entitled to allow yourself to do what feels best for you in the moment, but once you feel you’ve sufficiently sat with an emotion, do not linger there – and get to the self-soothing as quickly as you can to improve your resilience to anxiety.

The more frequently that you try out techniques and decide which ones work best for you, the quicker you will be able to defer to them as a recovery kit.

And this recovery kit is exactly what’s going to help you acknowledge and move past any bouts of anxiety that crop up for you.

How to be green in someone else’s home

This blog post is going to be about how to be green in someone else’s home whilst housesitting.

When we made the decision to start housesitting full time, I knew that I’d have to work hard if I wanted to keep my lifestyle and habits as green as possible. I’d spend a lot of time putting green initiatives in place in our own home over the four years we’d owned it – for example any vegetable or fruit waste went into the food bin, we’d rarely waste food as I used leftovers in inventive ways and had a lot of good quality Tupperware to enable us to keep them fresh in the fridge, and I’d started shopping for meat for Tom at butcher’s and buying fresh produce as locally as possible to lower our food miles.

We recycled so much that we barely had any waste for the black rubbish bin. We bought better quality brands that promoted green and sustainable ethics and had 100% recycled packaging. We’d switched toiletries brands to eco-friendly products such as Ecover and had reusable cases and refillable deodorant from brands like Wild.

It's quite hard work keeping your mindset and actions green. It takes a long time to put all of these procedures in place – weeks, months and years. So when it came to us hitting the road once more on our full time housesitting adventure, I knew that I’d have to work hard to be able to prioritise my eco lifestyle and greener ways of living.

It can be hard work, but it’s absolutely worth it.

So here are some of the things I’ve learnt about how to keep your lifestyle more eco whilst you’re on the road, and how to be green in someone else’s home.

Thinking about your food waste is probably the quickest way to immediately up your green credentials whilst on the road. If you’re going to do a sit where the homeowner doesn’t have a food bin or compost food waste, that doesn’t mean you’re essentially off the hook and you can live exactly how they have been living. It means you need to think outside the box and create your own system. For example, we did a housesit in Vienna where the homeowner didn’t separate food waste, but I decided I’d do this for the duration of our sit and take it down to the “biomass” bins which were located at the end of the street.

The same thing goes with recycling – no matter what the homeowner says they do, that doesn’t mean you have to do the same if there is an easy system for recycling products in that area. Research this on council websites, ask neighbours or try looking up Facebook groups for that area and search for what other people do.

Something which has been interesting has been what homeowner’s instruct us to do with their animal waste. If their procedure for discarding animal waste isn’t quite as green as it should be, you can decide to deal with it in the way that you know is more environmentally friendly for the duration of your stay.

Another thing that we make sure we do whilst at housesits to boost our green credentials is to spend some of the money we’ve saved on accommodation on organic and locally produced food, reducing our food miles and supporting small businesses. We also support other businesses in the area such as local cafes and shops by staying local and spending some money during our stay. This doesn’t have to be a lot – as Tesco says, every little helps!

Looking for sits that already have green initiatives in place will remove some of the hard work for you. We’ve seen sits advertised showing that homeowners have solar panels, grey water irrigation systems, grow their own vegetables and have chickens which produce eggs, and they may even be off grid completely. We did a housesit in 2022 for a family who had a well on their land and used the water for all the toilet flushes and to irrigate the garden and vegetable patch. If the homeowners are doing their bit for the environment, they’ll be shouting about it on their profile, and if you write about your green ideals in your application you’ll be sure to land the sit.

It's long been our ethos that we mainly buy clothes and shoes in charity shops – with the exception of sportswear – as most of the stuff you can get second hand is great quality, better for the planet than buying new and much cheaper too! Win’s all round. We also donate any clothes that we no longer need (due to changes in season or items that aren’t getting enough wear) to charity shops to help them keep going. The fashion industry is responsible for a huge amount of carbon emissions due to the sourcing of materials, use of water in the production process and the mileage that clothing travels before it is sold in a shop.

Consideration around your use of energy whilst in someone else’s home is very important – just because the homeowner is paying the bills doesn’t mean you should have the heating on all the time or have a bath every day and use an excessive amount of water. Use your head here – if it’s cold, turn the heating on, if you need to use water, do so. But don’t go to extremes with energy resources whilst at a housesit. There are some easy things you can do to reduce your water consumption every day such as turning the tap off whilst brushing your teeth, and placing watering cans outside to catch any rainfall which you can then use to water the indoor plants.

Try walking instead of driving a vehicle to explore the area near to the sit and when walking dogs try to walk them from the front door of the property. This will decrease your carbon emissions massively.

My last tip for being green in someone else’s home is related to departing a housesit. We always have leftover food when it comes to leaving a sit, and the best thing we’ve found to do with it is to either have Tupperware in the car so we can take it to our next sit or location, or to make a meal from the ingredients and leave it as a “welcome home” meal for the homeowner. This reduces waste and will increase your chances of getting a good review.

I hope this blog post has enlightened you to some ways in which we endeavour to be eco-friendly whilst in someone else’s home. Most of our top tips are simple enough to be implemented by anyone, so give some of them a try whether you’re on a housesit or in your own home.

Housesitting Horizons: 6 days of madness

No walking. You must carry me, human.

I never thought I’d wake up spooning a dog. I was momentarily confused as I came to from my slumber, thinking that Tom had shrunk and grown a lot of hair overnight, and come to think of it I didn’t usually spoon him. As my faculties returned I found myself tangled up with a four legged friend and felt even more confused. The position we were in was intimate. Am I now in a relationship with this dog? How did I get here?

We had arrived at the sit on a Monday, not ideal as we were both supposed to be working but this sit filled a small gap we had in our full time travelling life and we decided to jump at the opportunity of 6 days free accommodation. The dog we would be looking after was a Cocker Spaniel, which is a breed we really like as they are usually well trained, cuddly, easy to walk, independent and a nice size (not too big or too small). We weren’t excited about the sit but at the same time we weren’t worried about it either. To tell you the truth we hadn’t really thought too much about it. Having done over 20 housesits now, we’ve looked after a lot of pets, some that needed extra care and attention, but it didn’t seem like this dog would need too much from us other than walks and cuddles.

How wrong can two people be?

When we arrived at the house we were met by the lovely couple who lived there and introduced to the dog. She was lovely - cuddly, enjoyed a stroke and seemed to like Tom and I.

However, almost as soon as the homeowners left to go to the airport, her behaviour changed. She became very needy, wanting attention all the time and barking incessantly if she didn’t get it. Her bark was loud, high pitched, and seemed to echo through every room. It instantly gave me a headache. We tried playing with her, cuddling her, distracting her, but not much worked.

When we walked her, she would refuse to walk certain ways. She’d simply stop walking. You’d try and drag her, stretching the lead to it’s maximum extension, and she’d roll over on the floor and become a dead weight. It meant that you’d have to pick her up for a few hundred feet, no matter how muddy or wet she was. My coat began to get ruined but I would not be dictated to by a dog.

On walks she was also very submissive towards other dogs, rolling over on the floor when she saw them, but when they approached to sniff her, she’d try and snap at them. It meant that as soon as we saw another dog we’d try and get her to go in a different direction or have to pick her up, afraid of the outcome.

Back at home, if I had a bath, she barked, if we watched TV, she barked, if she went in the garden, she barked. Work was becoming impossible as I allowed Tom to prioritise his job and mine went on the backburner as I had to entertain the dog. This took its’ toll on me as I love my work and had things I needed to get done. I became exasperated and short tempered as I struggled to understand what the dog wanted each time she was asking for attention from us.

Night time was the worst. We are heavy sleepers, deep sleepers. We’ve slept on the highest bunks on noisy trains in Russia, in tents whilst wild camping illegally and on the floors of airport terminals. We are hardcore sleepers. Not on this housesit. The dog wanted to be on our bed - we’d been warned about this by the homeowner. We were fine with that, as long as she stayed at the foot end and didn’t move around too much. We were assured that would be fine. We should’ve known better.

She clambered up onto the bed, staying on the covers but wanting to be in between us. We relented as we wanted to sleep. Light off. Wriggling. Shuffling. Suddenly the dog has burrowed her way under the covers and her head is on the pillows in between us. Marvellous. Not only that, but she routinely moved around, kicking us both in the face, in the back, in the stomach. It was uncomfortable and kept us awake.

She was a lovely dog for a few hours, but our time with her descended into a chaotic few days of just trying to get through the sit, which is never what we want. We felt she definitely had separation anxiety and some sort of attention deficit. She struggled to chill out. This felt like puppy behaviour but the dog was 8 years old.

We are experienced at pet care, especially when it comes to dogs. But this was a challenge that we struggled with. God forbid a new or inexperienced sitter takes on this challenge. Before the sit we had ideas that we may return to do another sit for this couple, but unfortunately it will be impossible for us to do that and do our jobs which we have to prioritise.

It really is a lottery with housesitting. Pets are usually well behaved, or behave as their owners describe them, but sometimes you get a sit where the owner hasn’t adequately forewarned you of a problematic pet, and spooning a dog in the night can feel like a rude awakening.

Slow travel & Housesitting

This blog post is about the travel phenomenon that is slow travel: What it is, why you should consider doing it, and how housesitting fits in with the slow travel way of life.

Slow travel is exactly what it says on the tin – travelling slower. It prioritises connection and understanding of a place over ticking off the tourist sights. It emphasises ways of travelling that are more sustainable and ecologically sound. You could also call it “conscious travel” as you are more mindful of your impact on a place both during and after your visit.

A great example of slow travel is travelling overland rather than by air – it literally takes longer to do so. Another example would be staying in a place longer, and visiting only one location rather than hopping around 5 cities in 2 weeks.

Slow travel means doing lots of research before taking a holiday or travelling to a place. I love this part – finding out what green or sustainable initiatives are in place in a city such as their public transport systems, spotlights on local talent, tours conducted by people who live there, and cuisine which showcases the countries’ produce.

Why should we be travelling slower?

 A great question. In a world where we are all obsessed with time and schedules, slow travel allows us to refocus and shift our perspective, allowing the world to drift by at a slower pace, as it was intended. This will leave us feeling more relaxed and as though we really have been on a vacation rather than attempting 30,000 steps a day in 3 days to see everything a city has to offer.

More importantly though, slow travel is a huge step towards green travel. By choosing to take the train rather than fly, we are reducing our carbon emissions by a huge amount. For example, the carbon emissions for a flight from London to Seville is around 330kg per person. We did this route by train to get to a housesit, and it worked out as approximately 71kg per person. That’s 259kg less carbon emitted per person. 78% less carbon released into the atmosphere!

Some say that slow travel is the art of living like a local. If you work remotely like we do, perhaps you could take your work stuff and stay in each place for around a month. Some may say this is excessive, but it’s a whole lot less emissions than someone living in one place but commuting to and from work each day. Doing this you would get to travel full time, keep your carbon emissions low and embrace slow travel.

Slow travel allows us to refocus on connection and open up the space to experience more authentic cultural exchanges. As you are less rushed through your slow travel mindset, you will have more time to immerse yourself in the local culture. Perhaps you could learn a few words in the local the language, meet a family who have been important in that town or city, and investigate the food on offer to a fuller extent.

Although the travel can be more expensive when travelling overland in some countries, you may benefit from reduced accommodation costs if you are spending more time in a place. You could even consider volunteering in exchange for free accommodation.

Slow travel has the potential to bring more meaning to your travels. The mindset of wanting to delve deeper into a place and a community and spending more time there automatically means that you will adapt to local culture, understand how to be a respectful visitor there and leave a positive impact on the places you travel to. It also allows you to make connections with people all over the world and you will often get invited back to a place by someone you met there.

You will have more time for introspection; reflecting on the experiences that you have had and their significance in your life. This will give you a sense of purpose and fulfilment that you would never otherwise have had. Getting out of your comfort zone by trying activities you’ve never considered or embracing life like a local will lead to personal growth and an increase in your self confidence.

All this is great. But how does housesitting fit in with slow travel?

Housesitting fits into the slow travel niche if you do it in a certain way. For example, we travel using housesitting but we have made the decision to stay in each place for longer, so we tend to mainly apply for housesits which are for a month or longer. This allows us to really explore a place, unpack properly and bond with the pets we are looking after.

Staying longer stops us from hopping between sits, upping our carbon footprint as we go. We aim to travel overland to each of the housesits we do, and so far have been able to do this for each and every one. If we did have to fly to a housesit, we’d look for multiple housesits in that area or country for a good few months to offset the carbon emissions from the flight.

The money we save on accommodation by using housesitting we can put towards travelling over land which can be quite expensive. We also put it towards experiences in some of the places we go, or shopping at smaller, locally run businesses in the area.

I often try to find a place to volunteer whilst we are at a longer housesit, such as a charity shop, or I ask the homeowner if they are involved in any local causes that I can continue in their absence. The homeowner is often a valuable resource of information that as sitters we can tap into to get to the heart of a place much quicker and easier. Asking them for recommendations on local, organic, fairtrade products or places to visit will really enhance your experience at that sit.

I hope you enjoyed this post about slow travel and how housesitting can allow you to embrace this travel movement and lifestyle.

The therapeutic benefits of housesitting

This blog post is all about the therapeutic benefits of housesitting. I’m talking about the mental and physical benefits that you can get from your increased interactions with animals and nature through housesitting.

Hundreds of studies have been done all over the world which evidence time and time again that spending time in the presence of animals can boost our levels of serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin regulates our mood and can aid long-term feelings of happiness and wellbeing. Dopamine is known as the “feel good” hormone as it allows us to feel happiness and pleasure as well as contributing to motivation and focus. And you can increase the amounts of these hormones in your body simply by interacting with animals regularly. Amazing.

In my book I delve deeper into several studies that research how animals can be used in therapy for conditions such as anxiety, depression, PTSD and even patients diagnosed with cardiovascular conditions. From this we can see that animals can have a positive impact on both physical and mental health. A 2008 study in Japan showed that even just eye contact between humans and dogs could increase oxytocin levels in humans. Oxytocin is known as a driving force behind bonding and care giving as well as positive feelings – it is well known as the “love” hormone. Simply looking a dog in the eye can allow us to produce a hormone which creates feelings of love and care!!

The simple fact that most animals require you to feed them, walk them, give them attention and clean up after them means that an animal gets you up and out – boosting your energy levels and giving you more of a sense of purpose. These tasks provide you with a routine which may make you feel more grounded and focused as well as feeling needed. We all need to feel needed in order to feel part of a community or ‘tribe’.

It has been shown that dog and cat owners have lower blood pressures than those who don’t own pets, and studies have even shown that a cats purr at a specific frequency has healing powers and can assist with pain relief, wound healing and muscle repair.

Doing the research for my book and finding these studies well and truly blew my mind. I knew that looking after pets made me feel great – mentally and physically – but I didn’t realise the full extent of what pets really do for us.

Once I was done researching the power that animals have on our mental and physical health, I also looked into the power of nature. The healing power of nature is a subject that I could read about all day as it is simply fascinating.

In a nutshell, what I found was that nature really can and does heal us.

Studies have shown that patients in hospital with a view of trees and natural landscapes outside their windows required less pain medication than those with a view of a brick wall. Short term memory has been shown to be improved by 20% after a walk in nature versus a walk through urban streets. Patients with anxiety, depression and eating disorders were shown to make headways in improving their lifestyles when spending more time outside and in nature throughout their treatment plans.

A 2010 study showed that walking through forest areas allows us to inhale phytoncides which increase our number of “natural killer” cells. Phytoncides are airborne chemicals given off by the forest plants. Natural killer cells are white blood cells which support the immune system, combat infections and also help to reduce the occurrence of heart disease, diabetes and even cancer!

Wild swimming has become really popular in the last few years, but it really does have some amazing health benefits. Spending some time submerged in cold water has been shown to boost dopamine levels – that’s the “feel good hormone” remember – by up to 530%, helping to relieve pain, improve wellbeing and make our nation a whole lot happier.

Crazes like wild swimming and forest bathing may have more of a charm to them now, so give them a go! Spending time in nature really can heal us.

Housesitting full time has allowed me to spend more time around animals and in nature than ever before. I always knew I was the outdoorsy type, but working office hours meant I struggled to get my fill of nature. Now, I’m often walking dogs, feeding chickens, maintaining someone’s garden or greenhouse, tending to cattle, and exploring the areas I find myself housesitting. It means I’m outside probably 50% more of the time than I was before, and I know that all of that time spend hiking, exploring and revelling in nature is doing my head and my heart a whole lot of good.

Give it a try, your mind and body will thank you!

International housesits

This blog post is all about international housesits - how they work, what you need to think about before and after you apply to them and how widespread housesitting has become around the world.

Housesitting has become much more widespread in the last few years than ever before. People in far flung corners of the globe are now listing their homes as available for you to go and sit. This is great news for us housesitters, as the more widespread it becomes, the more sits are available. On Trusted Housesitters, the website we use to facilitate our housesitting lifestyle, there have been sits popping up in Central America, Asia and Africa more frequently in the last year than ever before.

Since starting to housesit full time 18 months ago, we’ve completed a few sits overseas. It’s so exciting when you see an exotic destination pop up on the website with available dates – somewhere warm and sunny, or somewhere you’ve always wanted to go. But before you press that button to apply, hold your horses! There are a lot more things to consider before agreeing to do an international housesit.

I’m just going to talk about a couple of tips I have on how to secure an international housesit:

As the sit is overseas, always offer to do a video call with the homeowner in your application message – it isn’t going to be viable for you to meet them in person prior to the sit but a video call allows the homeowner to get more of a sense of who you are and whether you’re the right person for the job.

In my book I discuss the calendar hack that we put in place for international sits. It puts the homeowner mind at rest, as well as our own. The calendar hack is something I often call “no mans land”, and it is a period of time between sits which we keep completely free. This can be anywhere from a day or two to a week, which allow us to travel to the destination and allows for any delays, cancellations or changes to travel plans on the way. When we arrive, if we are a day or two early, sometimes the homeowner will host us before they leave, or if the place is smaller or that doesn’t appeal, we may book an Airbnb for a few nights. This also allows us to adjust to any time differences and de-stress from the travel. I find that when I tell the homeowner about the “no mans land” that we always put in place for international housesits, it reassures them that we understand all of the many complexities that can come with overseas travel, and often lands us the sit.

Now, back to the things to consider before agreeing an international housesit. I’m going to talk about the “Big 5”. These are: Visas, Passports, Vaccinations, Schengen and Green travel.

Visas – Do you need a visa to travel to this country? If so, check out the cost and difficulty of obtaining one before you agree to the sit. On a side note – make sure you’re applying for a tourist visa as housesitting on an exchange basis is not usually considered “work”, but check this with the relevant embassy if you are unsure.

Passports – Do you have a passport? If not, consider the costs, process and time scale of getting one before the sit. Also a quick reminder that you need to check your passport validity before you travel as most countries will require you to have 6 months left on the passport in order to allow you entry into the country.

Vaccinations – Do you need any vaccinations to enter this country? Use the Gov.uk website to check this for each travel destination, and enquire with your doctors about how to book in for them. Certain vaccinations require more than one injection spaced weeks or months apart so advance planning on this front is crucial.

Schengen – Now that the UK has left the EU, Schengen is a consideration which we now have to consider when travelling for long periods within Europe. Go on the Government website or google a Schengen calculator for help with working out whether you need to leave the Schengen zone to reset your days.

Green Travel – Consider the environmental impact that travelling overseas will have. How much carbon will be released from the mode of transport you choose to get there? Will you have to fly? Or can you get there over land? Is it viable to travel there to housesit? Or are you simply applying because the location looks cool? If the sit is only a week long is it really green travel? Could you look for other sits nearby so that you extend your time in the location? These are all things to consider before booking international sits.

There are many other things to consider in regards to international housesits, which I go into in depth in my book in the chapter “Common Issues while Housesitting”.

You need to think about any language barriers you may run in to, and whether this will make you feel isolated or lonely.

Considering the customs that are in place in the country you are travelling to is also very important – for example, should you cover up whilst out and about? If so, is that something you will adhere to? If not, perhaps you should reconsider whether it is appropriate for you to travel there.

Researching the health care in the country you intend to travel to is very important. That way you will be prepared should you run into any issues and need to see a doctor or a dentist.

Do a quick quote for travel insurance which covers the housesit, and make sure it is affordable and covers everything you need for medical issues whilst there.

Think about how you will get your post whilst you are away. Can you get it redirected to a friend or family member and ask them to open anything and send you pictures? Can you send it to a PO box?

What will be your backup plan if the sit is cancelled close to the start date and you already have your flight/train/ferry or other transport booked and paid for? You should look at international housesits as an investment, not a right. You get to explore places overseas in exchange for looking after someone’s home and pets. The travel costs to get you there are your own expense. We try to book flexible or fully refundable tickets where possible, and we only book travel a maximum of a few months before a sit. Whilst this may be more expensive it covers us if we have any problems or if the sit is cancelled or dates changed.

I hope this post has helped you think more about taking your housesitting journeys overseas - once you’ve fully contemplated all of the above and jumped onboard the international housesit bandwagon all that’s left to do is apply!

Full time travel whilst being eco-friendly

This blog post is about full-time travel and being more eco-friendly whilst doing it. Two concepts that you may think don’t go together, but with a little forethought and effort they can be a match made in heaven. There are a few chapters in my book all about this subject.

We’ve been travelling full time for a lot of our adult life; spending two years backpacking around the world when we were younger, and now living a fully nomadic life doing housesitting full time. This allows us to travel but in a more grown up way – no more hostel dorm rooms for months on end, or communal bathroom facilities! It also means that we can keep working whilst we travel as we are both digital nomads and all we need is Wi-Fi to get to work. This gives us more of a sense of purpose than when we were simply waifing and straying our way around the world on a budget, and we have more stability from the income earned.

I’ve always been a bit of an eco-warrior, so I used to feel a bit torn when I considered that travel was my main passion in life. An eco warrior who advocates full time travel? Surely not. Yes, that’s right. In the huge change of lifestyle we made in 2022 to rent our house out and housesit full time, I realised I needed to act in line with my green thoughts and become a greener traveller.

When it comes to housesitting and travel, the main things I need to think about to keep my carbon emissions low and my eco-status high are..

1)      How we get from A to B

2)      How to travel lightly

3)      Which locations I choose to housesit in

Number 1 seems obvious – to reduce your carbon footprint you should attempt to cease flying and travel over land. This has been my goal for the last 2 years, and in that time I’ve only taken 3 return flights to countries that couldn’t be reached via land in the time constraints we had (Central Asia, the USA and Albania). We tend to travel to any housesit in Europe by bus or train, as they are so well run overseas. In the UK we have our own vehicle which we use to drive between housesits. If you do travel by public transport such as bus or train, check out whether there is an option to go on a service that is electric or run by renewable energy; Europe is a forerunner in these things so they are becoming more and more available.

Number 2 is something that a lot of people don’t connect to an increase in carbon emissions. Travelling with lots of luggage increases the weight that is in that plane, car, bus, and so on. The increase in weight requires more effort and therefore more energy to physically move along, which then increases the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. It’s a simple fact that travelling lighter is travelling greener. When we travel to housesits in Europe I have a backpack for my clothes and toiletries and a smaller rucksack which has my work things in – laptop, books and notepads. This is as light as I can travel.

I much prefer travelling this way in the summer months as the outfits are smaller so I can take more of them with me, and I also cut down on the weight from my shoes – no bulky boots in the summer, only my hiking boots, flipflops and trainers. I go over my eco packing hacks in my book but I’ll briefly mention some here – use compression sacks, they work wonders on reducing the size of your luggage. Upgrade your toiletries to reusable instead of throwaway (think flannel instead of face wipes), and buy from eco-friendly brands such as Tropic skincare. Get rid of big bulky layers and invest in warm but thin layers made of materials like merino wool.

Number 3 is something I spend a lot of time considering when applying for housesits. It’s something else that people don’t often think about when travelling between housesits. The closer together they are geographically, the less travel is required and therefore the smaller your carbon footprint. We tend to group sits together – committing to travelling to one area or country and then looking for 6 months’ worth of sits in that area or region. This means we are travelling less in general and get to see more of the country we are in. It also gives us a big eco boost.

I want to talk a little bit now about travelling with a conscience. It can be hard to combat your worries about the impact you are having on the environment, especially if you are an eco-warrior like me. However, after a lot of research and reading, and a lot of late-night anxious thoughts on the subject, I’ve come to realise that no matter what I do I am releasing carbon – just by breathing. I know that I am doing my best to be more green when I travel, and that is as much as I can do. I truly believe that if you are making travel plans that are more eco-friendly, without compromising your comfort, work or health too much, then you are doing some good in the world.

As I say in my book, “We will never stop travelling completely. So, we need to make conscious decisions about how and when we travel to reduce pollution and our individual carbon footprints. Through our actions and decisions, we can influence policy makers in governments, the travel industry itself and our own friends, families and communities to make positive steps towards a greener future.”

Housesitting websites and how to make your profile stand out

This blog post is all about the different housesitting websites and also about how to make your profile stand out from the rest.

Chapter 3 of my book briefly compares all of the major housesitting websites. You may have heard about Trusted Housesitter’s before, as that is the biggest website there is and the one that we use to secure our housesits.

Trusted Housesitter’s is one of the most expensive websites for housesitting (around £129 a year for sitters and homeowners) but I would say this website has the most sits available worldwide. It also has additional features like vet helplines, member support and forums to talk to other users. I find that the website is easy to use but more importantly the app is very user friendly and that’s the main way I access the site now.

Nomador is another big housesitting website. It’s around £80 per year for membership  for sitters and I believe it is still free for homeowners. However, I find the website a little clunky and the housesits are mainly limited to Europe, not worldwide. You may find this suits your travel plans so check it out.

Mindahome has different websites for the UK and Australia. When I wrote my book it was free for homeowners and £15 for UK sitters to join up. I also find this website more difficult to use and have found that there are not as many sits available on here. Mindahome is the only website that I know of that allows you to filter by whether or not you can bring your own pet with you to the sit, so it’s worth checking out for those of you travelling with pets.

Housesitters UK also has different websites for Australia, New Zealand, America and Canada. It is free for homeowners and between £30-60 for sitters to join, depending on the country. The website is easy to use and well laid out, however I have found that there are less housesits available on here compared to Trusted Housesitter’s.

As well as these ones there is also Mind My House, House Carers,  House Sit Match and many many more. Each year several new housesit websites pop up. It is a growing trend and community.

Before we move on to looking at your profile I’ll just say a brief word about Facebook – there are groups on Facebook where sits are advertised and organised. Check these out if you are interested, but remember you won’t have those additional support systems that you get through websites such as background checks and support whilst you are on the sit.

If you do want to join up to try housesitting and you decide to go through Trusted Housesitters, you can get 25% off your membership with code RAF496153 when you sign up.

Ok, now let’s talk about your profile.

My golden rules to creating the best profile are:

1)      Introduce yourself and the people you will be housesitting with. Add in your key hobbies and interests and don’t be afraid to let your personality show.

2)      Include ANY experience you have of looking after animals – not just domestic animals like dogs and cats but also poultry, livestock, birds, fish, rabbits and so on.

3)      Make your own needs from the sit clear – if you need Wi-Fi to work remotely, put it on your profile. This is an exchange so make sure you communicate your needs too.

4)      You are allowed up to 10 photos on your profile. Make sure you include the main people who will be housesitting with you – if this is your family, make sure you are all in the photos, the same with couples or friends. The photos are also really important to get across to the homeowner how much you like animals – make sure you upload at least a few photos of you with pets.

5)      Add on any relevant qualifications or occupations you’ve had such as a dog walker/boarder, veterinary experience, pet first aid courses, work in security services, armed forces, police, healthcare, schools – anything that requires a higher clearance check such as a DBS or vetting. Some people are looking for housesitter’s simply for security of the home – they may not even have pets, so all of these skills and checks are worth mentioning.

6)      Don’t embellish your profile. Do not say you are confident with strong dogs unless you truly are. Don’t say you love all animals if you actually dislike cats. Do not say you have experience with livestock if you don’t. It is a lie, and will make the sit more difficult for you. And you can be sure that this will show in your reviews.

7)      Keep your profile up to date – making sure that your profile is up to date is very important, even if it is small things that have changed such as your occupation, your location or an increase in your experience with pets or a more diverse range of animals. You will find that the more sits you do, the more you can talk about your experience and the more photos with pets you will have to share with homeowners.

As you’ll see from this blog post, there’s a lot of different websites out there facilitating housesitting across the world and a lot of work goes in to creating your profile. But the more time you spend finding the right website and working on your profile, the easier it will be for you to secure housesits in the long run!

Housesitting: What is it and is it for everyone?

What is housesitting?

So, first things first, what is housesitting? Housesitting is an exchange – people come and look after the homes and pets for people who are away from home. The people who come to look after peoples’ homes and pets are called housesitters. The people who host them are called homeowners or ‘Pet Parents’ which is a term coined by Trusted Housesitters – one of the websites you can use to try it out.

It’s something which has been around for decades but has really taken off in the last ten years or so due to the apps and websites which now facilitate it.

It can be paid work for housesitters but the majority of housesitting is unpaid and based on reviews. This makes it a complete trust exchange.

Is it for everyone?

When anyone asks me this question my answer is always a big yes! That’s a yes in capital letters. Housesitting can absolutely work for everyone and anyone.

You can use it for holidays – whether you want a short city break, a hiking adventure or a few weeks’ on the beach. I recommend this to everyone I know as it’s so easy to do and will change the way you look at holidaying. It can also save you loads of money as you can get free accommodation for all your trips.

Yes – you heard that right! Housesitting is a massive movement which, if you use review based websites like Trusted Housesitters to do it, only costs £100-£200 a year to sign up and use for unlimited housesits. So this means you can go and stay in an apartment in central New York City to look after a cat for free. This won’t impact your holiday very much as cats are low maintenance and fairly self-sufficient. Alternatively you could go to Australia and look after a mansion with a pool just to feed a lizard or a pond of fish, both of which barely require care. Obviously you have to look after and be respectful of the home you are staying in.

You can also use housesitting for long term travel which is what we do. We started housesitting early last year close to where we lived in the UK. We spent any free weekends we had exploring our own country and places quite close to our own home. We loved the freedom it gave us, and when we had to have our cat Selma put down in April, we loved the way we could connect with animals by looking after other peoples’ pets.

We both had jobs we loved, but Tom got a fully remote job in July last year and I realised it was a sign from the universe that perhaps we could travel full time, if we could both work remotely. This was a difficult decision for me, as I loved my job in the police and had recently joined the Major Crime Team where I’d wanted to work for some time.

I spent a lot of time in the summer of 2022 trying to decide what to do. In the end, it came down to one day when I remembered a passage from a book I’d read – The Chimp Paradox. In the book, Steve Peters describes our “life force”; our main driver in life, and the way he explains this is to imagine theoretically that you’re on our death bed, and a younger person comes to ask you what they should do with their life. Your answer to this question shows you what your life force is. I asked myself this question, and my answer was still the same as it had been when I first read the book years before. My answer was “travel”. I quit my job the next week.

We rented our house out as it was going to be empty and have been travelling full time going from housesit to housesit and looking after pets all over the world for a year now.

When I say that housesitting is for everyone I really do mean it.

In my book I go through loads of different scenarios to showcase the fact that it is true.

Whether you are a solo traveller, couple, group of friends, family, or are travelling with a pet, housesitting could be the key that unlocks the door to freedom for you! Your tribe is obviously important to you, so make sure you read this section of my book to find out my top tips for your housesitting set up!

Housesitting can also work well for people travelling with disabilities and health conditions, whether they are physical or mental. The best thing to do is to prioritise your health and talk to homeowners at length about what you need to be able to housesit successfully and thrive whilst doing it. This may be considering the house layout, accessibility and nearby health centres.

If you are a green traveller, housesitting can work for you as long as you are mindful about the travel between sits, considering how you will get there with a low impact on the environment. It’s also quite hard to keep up the green lifestyle whilst in someone else’s home, or when in a new area, and I’ve written a chapter specifically on this topic in my book.

If you are housesitting in the UK, the first things to do when you get to a housesit to keep yourself aligned with your green-travel self are as follows:

-          Find out how to recycle / deal with food waste in that area – bin colours, collection days and points are different all over the country

-          Reach out to the community to find out if there are any green initiatives in the area which you could get involved with

-          Find the nearest charity shop so that if you have anything you want to shred before you move onto the next housesit you can easily donate it, and if you find yourself needing something whilst there you know where to go to get it

I hope this blog post has explained a little more about what housesitting actually is and has encouraged you to give it a go!

An ode to January

I recently said to Tom that January is one of my favourite months, and it may be an unpopular opinion, but it’s true. I enjoy the colder weather, the quieter evenings, the freshness of the new year and new month.

Many people find January a depressing month and ‘Blue Monday’, the third Monday of January, is heralded as the most depressing day of the entire year! Think of that! Whether or not that is true or just a marketing campaign to encourage yet more online shopping I’m not sure. But what I do know is that many people struggle in January.

There are many reasons for their struggles. People are often low on funds after a splurge at Christmas, and an early payday because of the bank holidays in December mean that they are more stretched financially in January. There is this sort of ‘come down’ that people feel emotionally as their social calendar is emptier than a busy December of work parties and meet ups with friends and family. There is a certain type of weather in January - often grey, drizzly and cold. A feeling of not wanting to go out and hibernating can settle over some.

But I want to tell you all the reasons that I love January.

1. The social pressure is off. As an introvert I find that the high level of socialising in December takes a lot out of me. I just love the fact that in January there are less social events and less pressure to meet with others constantly.

2. I love getting cosy when the weather is bad outside. Give me a wood burner, a blanket and a cup of tea and I’m in my happy place.

3. Sometimes, January can provide unexpected - and therefore all the more exceptional - blue sky sunny days. They make me beam with happiness.

4. The new year heralds in a new motivation for me. I find myself full of ideas and projects that I can’t wait to start.

5. Because I tend to keep my calendar free throughout January, I find that I have so much more time than any other month of the year and I use that time very productively.

6. The new year makes me feel I’ve turned a corner in the seasons and all of a sudden spring doesn’t feel too far away.

7. The days begin to get longer but there is still a sense of wintry darkness - the good kind of darkness - that cloaks January days and brings me a sort of peaceful calm.

8. I begin to realise just how close I am to doing all those plans I’ve made for spring and summer, which brings me excitement.

9. Being frugal brings me a sense of contentment; the bank balance being lower means that I have to reign in my spending and reminds me that I don’t actually need that much stuff.

10. After the over-indulgence of December I find that my body and mind require detoxes which make me feel healthy and replenished.

In January last year I remember being so productive I wrote chunks of my first book each day. And this January has been no different for book number two, amongst other exciting projects and journeys I’ve begun.

I often long for the turning of the year and for the new month to arrive whilst in the midst of Christmas chaos. I’ve started to think of January as a friend, an ally, a guide. I look forward to her arrival each year.

So goodbye January. Thank you for everything you nourished me with in 2024. I can’t wait to see you next year.

Adventures with anxiety: The importance of exercise

Hey everyone! Installment two of the “Adventures with anxiety” series is a post talking about the importance of exercise when it comes to maintaining good mental health and wellbeing, and keeping anxiety at bay.

Benefits of exercise for the anxious person:

• Endorphins released (hormones released by the brain to relieve pain, reduce stress and improve mood)

• You get to interact with class participants, teachers, gym buddies

• You’ll feel a “little win” when completing a session or class

• It burns off excess adrenaline released by trigger of sympathetic nervous system when anxious

• Often gets you out of the house

• Boosts confidence and self-belief

We all know that exercise has great benefits for our body and our mind. It’s been drummed into us since school, and is spoken about a lot in mainstream media. However, it’s not easy to become a lover of exercise if you’re simply not built that way. I have never really enjoyed exercising. I used to write fake notes from my mum to give to the PE teacher at school to say I couldn’t take part in this activity because I was on my period or poorly. My dislike of exercise definitely came from being ‘forced’ to do it a few times a week at school. In secondary school in that awkward teenager stage the last thing you want to do is get changed in front of everyone, show off your lack of coordination in front of everyone (including those that dislike you or perhaps even bully you) and then use a communal shower.

And so I avoided exercise at all costs. Back then, I was slim without trying to be. I ate all day and my metabolism helped keep me skinny. I don’t think I really appreciated this at the time, as now I am almost 30 years old, I’ve come to realise that that was a phase. My metabolism has slowed down, it’s harder to stay slim and much easier to put weight on if I have a few days where I don’t pay attention to what I eat.

In the last five years where exercise has become a means to staying the size I feel most comfortable at, it turned into a necessary evil. I still didn’t like doing it, but I did it sometimes to keep myself a weight I deemed acceptable. I tended to stick to running on the treadmill as it gave quick results and made me feel good about myself. It was easier than running outside as the machine would pace my run and track my time and calories etc.

And then I found yoga. If you know me well, you’ll know that I started yoga practice about 6 years ago and I loved it from the first instant I did it. It was a gentle form of exercise that included meditation and which I found improved my mental health massively. It allowed me to be social and interact with people in my class on a low-key, no pressure basis. It toned my body, improved my flexibility and allowed me to work on my breathwork. I felt more energised, calmer and happier.

I realised I had found my “thing”. It had taken me a long time and I’d had to try out several classes at the gym and forms of exercise such as running outdoors, running on the treadmill, weights, HIIT classes, spin, martial arts - the list goes on! Finding an exercise that I love has been both physically and mentally positive for me. It keeps my anxiety at bay the more I practice. I now easily notice the affect that skipping a yoga class has on my mental state.

On the other hand, I still sometimes feel anxious during a yoga class or whilst exercising, and I remind myself to pause or come back to my breathwork as that calms me. I also remind myself that if I need to leave the class, I have that option. I am choosing to be there. Sometimes I feel anxious before a yoga class, especially if it is in the evening, and find myself changing my behaviour through the day prior to a class. Because of this I try to do my practice in the mornings when I can.

So that’s it.. yoga is my “thing”.

It’s time for you to find your thing. Go out there and exercise your little butt off. Your mind will thank you for it.

Top tip: If you find that the thought of exercising in a class or group setting fills you with anxious feelings, ask a friend to go with you initially.

Adventures with anxiety: The power of journaling

Hey everyone! It’s been a while since I posted some short, easy to read content on here and so here goes… I’m going to begin writing some small blog posts about my adventures with anxiety.

I’ve had anxiety for a long time, almost 15 years now, which is half of my life. I was journaling this morning and when I realised it had been that long - half of my life - I almost gasped out loud. Instead, I gasped internally and decided I would begin to speak out about this condition which I’ve battled with for so long, by putting some words about it out there.

I’m not sure if I was ever officially diagnosed with anxiety disorder, or if I just worked out that was what I had. For a period of time in my teenage years I thought I had phobias or OCD’s, which I do believe I have some tendencies of, but it has become clear to me through the investigation of mental health and numerous visits to doctors and health professionals that I have anxiety. My anxiety is not generalised, although in the time I’ve had it it has spread from certain situations into more aspects of my day to day life.

I know anxiety well. I have been anxious a lot of the time of my almost 30 years on the planet. Anxiety has been the reason I’ve cried, run, fought and spent a lot of time frustrated and exhausted. Anxiety tried to swallow me whole.

Have you ever been in the ocean and at the last minute you notice a big wave coming towards you and before you have time to get out of the way it comes down full force on top of you? A wall of heavy water hitting you, annihilating you, swamping you. You swallow water. You taste salt. You realise you can’t breathe. Your lungs don’t have enough air in them. And then you reach up and break the surface of the water, bringing your face back up and readying yourself for that precious intake of air that you so desperately need. But before you can inhale, another wave lands on top of you. You are crushed by the all consuming water. You realise just how small you are, how at the mercy of the elements you are, how weak you are.

Eventually, you do manage to gasp in a breath of air. You take a few seconds to reassess. Did you almost just die? Are you being overdramatic? You feel mind shatteringly exhausted. You are tired in your bones, in your head, in your core. Your limbs are heavy and your brain is fuzzy. You need to sleep for an eternity.

You may get that sleep you need. Or you may not. At some point, the waves begin to strike you once more.

For a long time, that’s what anxiety felt like for me.

I want to reach out to anyone that is feeling or has felt this way. You are not alone. So many of us experience anxious thoughts and feelings. So many of us change our behaviour to fit our anxieties.

Step one on beginning to see things more clearly?

Journaling.

The power of journaling is unmatched in the way it can instantly soothe our minds. Getting things out of our heads and down onto the page is a very cathartic process as it allows us to express our innermost thoughts, feelings and behaviours freely, without the worry that we will be judged by others. No-one is going to read your journal, so you can really let your thoughts fly as your pen glides across the paper. You may think I’m old fashioned, but I recommend using good old pen and paper for this process as you will feel more connected to the process through the physical action of writing. You can also doodle in your journal if you’re feeling creative or artsy.

The reason that getting our thoughts out of our heads and down onto a page is so important is that it allows us to process things more fully, and makes sure that certain thoughts or feelings don’t fester inside of us. It’s a healthy way of expressing ourselves and getting to know our own emotions better.

You don’t have to journal a certain amount each day - if you only have time for a few lines that’s fine. I would suggest that you schedule in a time for you to do this each day and set a reminder on your phone to ensure you do it. Once you’ve done it enough, it will become a habit like brushing your teeth and you won’t need reminding. Finding the best time of day for you can take a few attempts too - I used to journal in the evening but now I find that morning journaling works best to set me up for the day.

If you struggle with the process, a great thing to do is to practice gratitude journaling instead. Simply writing down three things you are grateful for today will shift your focus towards positivity. The things you are grateful for can be a person, place, experience, opportunity, or something small like the taste of your coffee or the colour of the sky.

I hope that this post has given you an insight into the way that anxiety can feel and perhaps it’s reminded you that every one of us struggles in some way. Get those thoughts out of your head and down on paper today.

I wish you all well in your journaling!

#JournalingForWellbeing

Sleeper train: Tashkent to Almaty

The 17 hour sleeper train is an easy way to get between Tashkent - the capital of Uzbekistan, and Almaty - the second city and old capital of Kazakhstan. There are of course flights between the two but if you’re anything like us and trying to cut down your carbon emissions then you will be seeking something different. The sleeper train is also an experience in itself and provides something that travelling by plane cannot seem to achieve - relaxation, freedom, and rest.

With no limits on luggage, a range of class options which are all affordable and a restaurant/bar car, you can have a huge amount of fun on the sleeper train, and still get a good nights’ sleep. The trains are sleek and modern, providing comfort and necessities - there is one plug in each compartment so perhaps bring a battery pack to charge your devices. There are lamps for each berth as well as the main cabin light, there is a temperature control panel, and you are provided with a blanket, pillow and sheets.

The timetable - though in Cyrillic it can be easily deciphered

Departing Tashkent at 12:39 three times a week year round (correct as of October 2023), the service rolls in to Almaty at around 7am the following day. There is a time change of an hour. We paid £40 each for our bottom bunks in a 2nd class 4 berth cabin. You can book tickets and see timetables online at https://eticket.railway.uz/en/home.

We chose to go for a 2nd class 4 berth cabin, and booked both bottom bunks for ourselves, aware that two others would possibly be sharing with us. The bottom bunks have the most room for luggage as you can store it underneath the beds and we had a huge backpack and two smaller bags as well as a bag of snacks.

On boarding, we were the only two people in the entire carriage we had booked in - score! The attendant was polite but rather brusque; checking our tickets and passports methodically before letting us board around 20 minutes before departure. Our cabin was spacious and we were very excited.

The train departed on time as most do in this part of the world, and we were off! We settled down with our books and crossword, snacks out and enjoying the scenery out of the window. Our cabin had a spacious table which we made the most of.

The best thing about travelling in this direction is that you get the border crossing out of the way fairly early; around an hour after leaving Tashkent you roll to a stop at the Uzbekistan side of the border. The attendant will come round and ask for your passport, which they whisk away out of sight leaving you slightly panicked.
Serious looking officials then board the train to check your documents; passports, train tickets, visa if you have one, and they question you as to why you are in Uzbekistan, why you are leaving, whether you will be returning etc. They will stamp and return your passports.

Once this is done, the customs officials will come round - there is always at least one who can speak English and that will be the one to visit you - check the cabin using a mirrored device and sniffer dogs, and ask you to empty most of your bags so they can check what is in there. The officials are very friendly and were more interested in my crime fiction books than the contents of my backpack! And the dogs were super cute; I had to restrain myself from distracting them from their oh so important work. This stop is scheduled for 1.5 hours and does take around that long.

Top tip - they lock the toilets at the borders so make sure you take a trip there before the border stop.

When the officials disembark the train, you are on the move again, for about 10 minutes until you reach the Kazakhstan side of the border where you go through the whole rigmarole again!

The Kazakh border stop is much more efficient and only takes around 40 minutes for the whole process. Once this is done, the train is allowed to go on its’ merry way and you can relax. When travelling in the other direction, the border stop is early morning and at the very end of your journey which isn’t quite so relaxing!

Once through the border, the whole of the train journey straddles the Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan border but there are no more official stops or document checks. Now the fun begins!

Get yourself down to the bar car where most westerners on sleeper trains tend to congregate. Order some local beer, some local vodka, and play some cards*.

*NOTE - On our return trip from Almaty to Tashkent on the sleeper train the attendants would not let us play cards. However, on our way to Almaty we played for almost 3 hours so it seems they can be quite contrary on this point.

Once you’ve enjoyed a few drinks you can have dinner on board as they have a whole menu of local foods to choose from. Tom had Plov (his staple diet in the Stans) which is a local dish of rice, meat and vegetables. I had a soup. There is an English menu for food/drink if you request it from the restaurant car staff - prices are in Kazakhstan Tenge and payment is cash only. There is a “money man” on board who comes through the train regularly and will change Uzbekistan Som, USD or GBP to Tenge for you at a fairly reasonable exchange rate. Beer was 1100 Tenge which is just over £2.

On we rolled, a fairly bumpy ride at times, and soon as we had predicted, several westerners joined us in the restaurant carriage. We chatted to a man who had travelled from the top of Scotland to Kazakhstan overland (train and bus) and was seeing how far he could get. We met another Englishman who was working in Tashkent and doing a visa run into Kazakhstan and back to Uzbekistan. We heard German accents and English accents and it was strange but quite enjoyable - so far on our trip we hadn’t seen any other westerners.

The restaurant car

We were treated to a spectacular sunset from the window of the restaurant car, which seemed to be over in a flash.

Once we’d spent enough of our Kazakh Tenge in the dining car we went back to our compartment. We still had no friends there, and the train had stopped several times and it was now 8pm. We had enjoyed the time on our own, especially since the cabin was very warm!

Bit warm there Tom?

We settled down for the night after reading our books and chatting for a bit longer. There was a longer stop of around 10 minutes at 8pm so we went out onto the platform to get a bit of fresh air, have a look around and visit the platform shop for some hot food - I got a cooked and buttery corn on the cob for around 50p, bargain!

We were ushered back on board by our carriage attendant before departure and noticed that our carriage was now quite full. We still had no-one else in our cabin. The beds were very comfortable and we found ourselves going to bed quite early at around 9pm.

You know what’s going to happen here, surely?

9.45pm - the cabin opens and the light turns on. Groggily I stir awake, I’d only just gotten to sleep. We have a friend! A lady pokes her head in, puts her bag on one of the top bunks, then leaves again - leaving the light on. I assume she’s gone to the toilet or to sort some things out and will be back momentarily, so we leave the light on and lie back down. But when she doesn’t return and it’s been nearly 30 minutes I decide enough is enough and I turn the light off and close the cabin door.

Around 5 minutes later she comes back and goes about the noisy business of making her bed, sorting her belongings out and assembling the ladder to climb onto the bunk above me. I go out to use the toilet, and when I am back she is settled. Light off once more, I get back in to bed and am rocked back to sleep by the rhythmic rocking of the train on the tracks.

There are various stops throughout the night and I wake at one or two of them, but not for long, and I wake up around 5am to get dressed for our arrival into Almaty feeling strangely refreshed. Getting off the train, we see a beautiful sunrise coming up behind the train carriage and we stand for a minute to soak in the beauty of seeing a new day come in, in a new place and country.

The Wimbledon Queue

Queuing at Wimbledon is something I’d always wanted to do - I don’t mind camping, and I knew the atmosphere would be amazing. It’s also a pretty sure fire way of getting tickets for Centre Court or Court No. 1 if you get there early enough or are prepared to camp for two nights, which is what we did!

Arriving at around 8pm on the Thursday evening, we were aiming to get in and watch the matches on the Saturday. We took along our tents, camping chairs, snacks and alcohol (of course!) and were all set to enjoy our time camping and chatting to other people in Wimbledon Park.

On arrival we were given a queue card which was for the Friday, we were around 600th in the queue. This meant that we could have gone in on the Friday and been the 600th people to enter, meaning we probably would have been able to get tickets for Court No. 2 for that day.

We went to sleep, having decided to wait until the Saturday to go in. Having informed a steward of our intentions they told us that the following day we’d be told to move our tents further up the queue when those going in on the Friday had packed up and entered. We’d then also be able to swap our Friday queue card for a Saturday one, which would be a much lower number.

Woken up at around 5.30am by stewards - and the need to go to the portaloo due to all the wine we’d consumed the night before! - we got dressed and waited to be told to move our tents. At around 8am, we shifted them so we were in the first line of the queue, and tried to guess what number we’d be given for Saturday. I guessed we were around 100 in the queue. I was wrong - we were numbers 57-60, and we were chuffed. This meant we would definitely get Centre Court tickets for the Saturday.

The Friday was roasting hot, and we struggled with the heat and the tiredness from not having a proper nights’ sleep. However, everyone in the queue was in great spirits and we enjoyed our morning. Some fellow campers had made a makeshift ice bag using a roll mat with a carrier bag of ice in the middle, into which they let us put a bottle of Champagne for later on!

We had been told in advance that we wouldn’t be able to leave the park or the queue at any time. However, we had parked nearby and knew that we could get away with saying we were going to/from the car for supplies if we were stopped. We decided to go into Wimbledon for lunch, and told the people behind us in the queue what we were doing and gave them our contact number in case any officials wanted us to come back or there were any issues.

Off we went, straight into Wimbledon town which was heaving with people! We managed to get a table for lunch at a café and spent a good couple of hours enjoying being out of Wimbledon Park. On our return, our neighbours said no-one had been round to query our absence - we’d gotten away with it!

We spent the afternoon lolling around, eating ice-creams and wandering around the park when we felt we needed to stretch our legs. We decided to go back into town in the evening to have a few drinks. We went to a local pub and watched some of the games being played that day - there were some great people playing and we wondered if we’d made a mistake waiting to go in on the Saturday.

Back to camp we went for another restless and interrupted night of sleep, excited for the morning to come, knowing we’d be on Centre Court soon!

When the morning came we were up and dressed by around 7am, ready to dismantle the tents and take all of our things back to the car before entering the grounds. We did all of this by around 8am, grabbing a quick coffee on the way back from the car which was parked in Wimbledon town. The queue marshals were so efficient and everything was so well run that they had us in the correct order and lined up ready to go in by around 9am.

The line moved quickly and we were taken in to a marquee area where we had to approach desks and choose which ticket we wanted to purchase. As we had already decided to go for centre court, the lady working on the desk told us which section of centre court she had tickets for. Not quite what we wanted, she conferred with her colleague on the desk next to her whom had tickets for a different section of centre court - one block back from the very front, and on the side exactly where we wanted to be. We scooched over to her colleagues desk and bought the tickets. They were around £120 per person, so very expensive, but worth every penny!

We moved on through the marquee and into another queue. Our bags were checked and then we were waiting for the grounds to open at 10am. The staff and marshals kept us entertained in the queue waiting to go in - Lavazza were providing free coffee’s to everyone and they also had iPad’s that they were taking around for people to play games on and win prizes.

Before we knew it, our time in the queue was over and the gates to Wimbledon opened. It was the strangest thing, being one of the first 100 people inside Wimbledon that morning. It felt so empty and we could wander around at leisure; like we had a backstage pass to the whole arena.

Once matches started we watched some junior doubles on the outside smaller courts, before going to find Henman Hill/Murray Mound or whatever you know it as - and watching the big screen for a little while. It felt surreal to finally be walking around the grounds after seeing it on the TV every year. We played some games in the American Express fan zone, got lunch from the canteen and got our first Pimms of the day.

Matches on Centre Court started at 1pm, where we took our seats to watch Alcaraz vs Jarry - two men’s singles major competitors. The match was incredible and Alcaraz won in 4 sets, going on to win the whole tournament. We also got to see Jabeur beat Andreescu and watch Brit Katie Boulter play, even though she lost to her opponent Rybakina (the defending ladies’ champion).

We were absolutely exhausted when the games rounded up at around 11pm, and getting back to the car took a while as the crowds emptied out of the grounds. We eventually got home to Gloucester at around 2.30am. What a few days - an epic way to get tickets for Wimbledon.

Would I do it again? Definitely.

Housesitting Horizons #3

Hey all! Here’s the third instalment of my housesitting horizons posts (shorter updates) which I’ve added whilst at Housesit number 17 in Andalusia, Spain…

I’m afraid I haven’t posted one of these for a while for a combination of reasons -

1) Tom and I both had a difficult couple of weeks. We felt isolated, lonely and quite down for a while in the middle there. As some of you know, Tom’s dad passed away recently and the isolation (location and language) of this housesit hasn’t helped us process things. Our feelings definitely impacted our productivity and motivation!

2) We had some plans whilst here which were incredible and included a trip to the beach in Portugal, a trip to Huelva for a nose around, a trip to Seville to do some sightseeing and a trip to Portugal to see our friends, which were much needed but kept us very busy.

3) I’ve been poorly for the last week of our sit - I’ve got tonsillitis! This kept me bed-bound for a while until I plucked up the courage to go to out of hours emergency centre and use google translate to explain what I needed. Antibiotics have kicked in now, and hoping to be back to normal in a few days time.

Anywhooo, I’m back, and I hope you’re all doing well!

Housesit 17 is coming to an end this Wednesday and we are moving on to Cadiz for a few days and then on to Morocco (eek, exciting!). In the interest of keeping it short here are my final points…

This housesit has taught us many things -

• We could actually get on board with a small dog - Rasmus is just the cutest, but we’d never been keen on little dogs before!

• Sometimes going somewhere they don’t speak any English can be exciting and adventurous, sometimes it can be the most isolating and frustrating thing there is - it often depends on how you feel at the time

• In this region of Spain, the churros and chocolate are enshrined in law (ok they’re not but they should be as they’re bloody amazing!!!)

• You can actually try clothes on before you buy them at the local market but the “changing room” is the back of the stallholders van with all the doors open…

• No matter how hard you try and relax in a yoga meditation you simply can’t if you have no idea what they are saying (the class was entirely in Spanish… I ended up planning my day in these bits of the lessons!)

So, as we’re almost-outta-here, this’ll be my last horizons for housesit 17. It’s been a helluva housesit. We’ll miss you sooo much Rasmus, Rosie & Billy Joe, but I’m not sure we’ll miss the decapitated animals you brought us as gifts, the endless ants that infested the house or the 40+ Celsius temperatures.

Hasta la vista, Aracena.