When I was growing up my parents would always take me on holidays and days out. Every chance they got, we would go and explore somewhere new and I loved every second of it. Whether we were spending a week in Butlins or going for a picnic in the countryside we were always doing something different.
My parents really liked to pack the car up with all our stuff and just drive. We'd stop at hotels, holiday parks and anywhere else that would put us up just to see what was available that week. We did this a lot and when I was around 8 we discovered a fairly well hidden holiday park just outside Bournemouth.
Sandhills was really small, a lot of the people on-site owned their caravans and there was a lovely community feel about the place. We fell in love with that park and returned year after year as we had made so many friends that we would always meet with. It got to the point that we would drive down to Sandhills up to five times a year; whenever there was a school holiday really.
When I was 14 I was lucky enough to go on a school trip to the French and Belgian battlefields of World War One. I'd been abroad before when was I was 4 and again when I was 11 but this was really something different. My best friend at the time came too and we had such an incredible weekend. Although I was used to going on holiday, it was always to some little english seaside town, so to do something completely new was amazing.
I loved talking to foreign people, I wanted to know what their lives were like in these strange new places and I wanted to see every part of these countries we had been taken too. On the ferry home we met some German boys, the 14 year old me found them very attractive and guess what? I could just about speak German. Although the encounter was brief and I definitely butchered their language I enjoyed being able to communicate with someone who wasn't English and I guess that's where my interest in languages comes from. The weekend was soon over and I was left feeling empty.
Around the time I was finishing up with my GCSE's I was asked if I wanted to go to Greece with my Aunt, Uncle and cousin for two weeks that summer. I don't think I'd ever jumped at an opportunity so quickly. It was nearly a year since I'd last left England and I was desperate to see more of the world. Within a few weeks I had a passport and we were all booked up for the holiday of a lifetime. Although we were still visiting Sandhills every chance we got, it was starting to lose its shine as I'd gotten a taste of real adventure.
Those two weeks were such a changing point for me. It was the first time I can ever remember getting on a plane and it was the first time I got the chance to really explore a new country. We spent the days driving around the island of Crete and swimming in the most gorgeous warm blue ocean I'd ever seen. We met people from everywhere and saw some fascinating ancient sites too. I came home feeling more determined than ever to see the world.
We stopped going to Sandhills when I was around 17. We still have the friends and the memories but now we have the passion for seeing new things too. We even manage to get my mom on a plane once a year or so and she really isn't a fan of flying. I do spend most of my time now travelling with Sean and we get away whenever we can. The poor bugger had never even left the country before meeting me but he got himself a passport within a year of us getting together and we've never looked back.
Since those two trips I took in my mid teens I've tried to work my way around Europe, ticking off; Spain, Turkey, The Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and more. As I'm writing this I've actually just returned from a fab trip to Disneyland Paris, which was less of an adventure holiday than we usually take but no less fun. I'll also be jetting off to Poland in the morning for a short trip so I'll be wandering around the streets of Warsaw when this goes live on Sunday.
If there's one thing I'm passionate about it's travel, I pour all of my money into my next getaway and I hope now you guys can understand - if only just a little - exactly where that love affair started.
Thanks for reading
x
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