Morocco boasts a spectacular coastline dotted with picturesque villages and beaches that are a travellers dream. Escape the busy souks of the city and chill by the coast in Taghazout to soak up the sun and the ride the ocean waves.
The best destination to travel to in 2023. We’ve put together 13 bucket list locations you must visit! These places are where you’ll experience wild natural places, rich in culture and under the radar places worthy of a spot on your bucket list.
Step back in time onto the island of La Graciosa, the perfect place to escape and get a taste for what many beaches on the Canaries would have been like before development. La Graciosa is an oasis of remote, virgin sandy beaches with clear turquoise water.
Portugal is home to some of the best surf towns and waves in Europe including Europe’s only surf reserve it’s time to grab your board and hit the road. The west coast of Portugal has a lot to offer including, beautiful nature reserves, spectacular beaches and vibrant cities. We’ve put together our list of the top 11 places you must see along the west coast of Portugal.
As the days get longer and the weather starts to warm up, festival season begins! We were invited to talk at the Camp Quirky festival 2022 edition and didn’t know what to expect as we’d never been before.
Camp Quirky is put on by the team at Quirky Campers and they have a lovely selection of their hire vans on show for you to discover. If you are considering van life or even just a trip by campervan, then it’s a great place to come and try something out! The Camp Quirky festival is designed for those who are interested in campervans whether it be building out your own van, living in a van, or enjoying travelling in a van. The festival is also for anyone who loves the outdoors, good food, music and sustainability. There is a dedicated tent section if you are planning on coming and don’t have a van.
We were very impressed to see just how sustainable Camp Quirky is. The entire festival is run off solar via the solar bus! The toilets are all compostable and at the end of the festival not a scrap of rubbish was left behind! Quirky campers are always looking at how they can be more sustainable in everything that they do and this is something we are also passionate about.
Known as the Greenest Handmade Campervan Festival in the UK, Camp Quirky is completely powered by the sun through solar panels. There are compostable toilets, recycling bins and you are encouraged to use your own cutlery, mugs, plates to reduce the use of single use plastics.
The first day we arrived, we queued up and parked up the van ready for the weekend ahead! The festival field is big, so it’s worth bringing a flag or kite to remind you where you are parked. We were close to the main tents and this made it easy to find our van and our three vans together it made it easy for us to find them in the dark. There is plenty to keep you occupied, as when you arrive you’re given a detailed programme of the weekend on what’s on so you can plan what you want to see and do!
We ran a workshop on how to take better travel photos and loved sharing tips and tricks and meeting lots of lovely people! We were really nervous about doing our workshop, luckily though everyone that came to our workshop was really friendly and had great questions. There were many other workshops and Q&A sessions about a variety of topics, including carpentry skills, life on the road and sustainability. Some of our favourite workshops were given by Lou and Em from Campervibe about European van travel and Beth and Jakes giving their experience of full time van living. The atmosphere at Camp Quirky was very chilled and a great place to meet other like minded people who have similar interests to you.
Even though we made sure to stock up our fridge and food cupboards before we arrived at Camp Quirky we ended up not eating in our van the whole weekend. The variety of food stalls covered everything from Indian to Mexican and one of our favourites pizza! There was also a cocktail bar and the main bar in the main tent serving drinks all day.
We had the pleasure of sitting on a van life Q&A in the main tent taking questions from festival goers. Nic, Beth, Emma and Lou as well as Linzi from Quirky Campers were also taking questions with us. Some of the questions we answered were, “How do we make money on the road”? And “How did we start a business in social media”? Perhaps the cherry on the cake for this session was the appearance of Russell Brand. After the session, it was lovely to make new friends and swap stickers which is a must for vanlifers!
As the sun set and the evening begins, live music fills the air with the chance to let your hair down and have fun! The best times at Camp Quirky were in between moments, just chilling with friends, checking out other vans and meeting new people.
We had such an incredible time and ended up being one of the last to leave on the Monday. We’d spent hours chatting to new friends and talking all things life, travel, cats and vans!
This year, we are so excited for Camp Quirky 2023 and seeing friends and making even more new friends, eating delicious food and just having an epic party. For Camp Quirky 2023 we have been chosen to be ambassadors and are so excited to be involved with such an incredible van life festival.
If you love festivals, van life, amazing people, good music and good food then this is the festival for you. Book you tickets here and we cannot wait to see you at Camp Quirky 2023!
This article is sponsored by Quirky Campers.
The Images in this blog are shared by @steffellsphotofilm & @findingouradventure
In 2014, we spent two months travelling around South Africa. This trip had been a dream come true and set a burning fire within us of a desire to travel.
We had always talked about a longer trip and our love for travelling, in fact the first thing we ever spoke about was where we’d travelled and where we would love to go. However, life got in the way and our desire to go on a longer trip seemed like a faint, long-lost memory.
Then in 2016, I (Jonny) was made redundant. It wasn’t as scary experience as I’d imagined it to be. We were running a wedding photography business at the same time as having full-time jobs and I had always wanted to do photography full time. In the few weeks after being let go (due to the business closing down) I brought up the subject of a long-term trip. We were currently saving hard to buy our first home, the idea of travelling seemed too complicated and buying our home was more of a priority at the time. This is when we realised that we couldn’t let our desire to travel long-term be suppressed any longer.
We floated the idea of us leaving the country for a multi month trip for 6 months wiith several family members which was met with various reactions. We felt slightly deflated that some did not share the same excitement as us. Whilst the concerns were valid they were also based on the fear of the unknown (related post here). We didn’t let it stop us and if anything it made us more determined. We decided to continue with our plan to buy our first home and rent it out while we were out of the country and then move back into it when we got home. We’ll fill you in how much of a disaster that turned out to be…but at the time we were pretty chuffed that we were able to save for a home and for our travels.
At the beginning of 2017 I changed my personal account on Instagram from a random mess of photos to a more travel focused account. I was posting about previous trips and slowly people started taking an interest in our photography and following us. Originally, I called it Live What You Love Travel. A nod in the direction of following your dreams.
By the time we set off to Bali in December 2017 we had almost 20,000 followers. We never thought this would happen and we never set out to build a community. The 6 months of travel quickly grew our account as we posted often and shared daily stories of our adventures throughout Asia.
Rewind to November 2017. We had been planning for over a year and and had less than a month until we set off. Mount Agung was almost erupting in Bali and threatening our trip before we had even started. My main concern though was our lack of suitable footwear. Our main problem was keeping bags light weight and the different environments we would be travelling through. We were going to be on beautiful tropical Islands to rainforests and even the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas. We knew that we would need sturdy footwear but didn’t want to take trainers and boots. It also didn’t seem sensible to take a pair of boots that would only be used for a couple of weeks out of the 6 months.
We were ready, but still couldn’t decide on what footwear we should take. We started searching for a shoe that had the right mix between lightweight and sturdy enough to take on the jungle and mountain environment. Thats when I thought of trail running shoes. I thought they would be perfect. Trail running shoes are very expensive though and the main brands are massive and the chances of them replying to me was very slim. This is when I decided to have a look at a fairly new company I had heard about. On Running are a Swiss running shoes company, after 30 seconds of looking on their website I knew that their trail running shoe the Cloud Venture was the shoe for us. If they said no I would have still gone and purchased them. They had just over 50,000 followers when I reached out on the 23rd November 2017, 12 days before our flight was due to leave. I didn’t expect them to reply and if they did how could we negotiate a deal in only 12 days?
I decided to message them explaining who we were and what we would be doing and where we would be going. The next day I received a reply saying “Hi Jonny, Hi Hannah, Thanks for reaching out. Your trip sounds interesting. Please email us”. They hadn’t even said yes yet but I replied saying “thanks guys we can’t wait to work with you.”
I sent an email and 2 hours later I decided to call the On head office. I knew time was short and I wanted to know if it was a yes or no so that I could then figure out our next steps. On said that They were “very excited about the trip” and within a couple of days we were introduced to our first pair of On Cloud Ventures and we couldn’t have been happier. It felt like the perfect shoe for our Asian adventure.
We were amazed that On were willing to take a chance on us and believe in our dreams with us. Since that initial phone call we have developed a friendship with On and they have supported us through many trips and adventures. They are my go to brand now and I would happily recommend them.
Since then On have exploded and I believe they are the fasted growing running shoe brand in the world. They now have more than 350,000 followers on Instagram and that just says it all about them. They are seriously good, and they have fantastic people in their organisation who deserve a lot of praise.
I now wear On shoes for almost everything, from photographing weddings in all black On Clouds to city trips in the all day Cloud Beams, running and workouts in the Cloud X. My personal favourites (to be honest I love them all) are the Cloud Swifts for sheer comfort all day, I move quickly when working and having a shoe that is fast but comfortable is amazing.
So heres to On for taking a chance on two young travellers needing a pair of shoes each.
Keep killing it.
(p.s this was not a sponsored post)
Here are a couple of links to joint articles we’ve written together with On
