Hello my dear readers!
It has been a few months since I last posted but I assure you I’m still alive and well. Some of you will have seen me floating around on other social media but I fell out of the habit of posting here regularly, or reading other bloggers posts for that matter.
I want to try and get back in to the swing of things but before jumping in to the travel, I thought I’d offer a bit of an update. Why haven’t I been posting? Where have I been? What have I been up to?
In all honesty, there’s no real reason for the lack of posting. You miss one week and before you know it it’s three months without a post. I’ve come close to finishing off a few draft posts on a number of occasions but I haven’t got as far as hitting that ‘publish’ button and consequently the blog has felt a little bit neglected.
With Covid and more time at home I can’t even say I haven’t had the time, I’ve just preoccupied myself with other things. Be it watching football, learning Finnish (Thank you Duolingo – long overdue!), watching Netflix, training, work or a number of other bits and pieces. Despite spending the bulk of my time at home I have been keeping myself busy.
I’ve also squeezed in a couple of trips since I last posted. I was a little more cautious / hesistant with the first trip but in August I went and spent a few days by the sea with a four-night trip to the Norfolk coast. I didn’t really feel right to be flying across the globe for my travel fix so decided I’d stay in England and pretty local too. I was also conscious about the weekends during the summer being busier so restricted myself to a Monday-Friday getaway which was nice.
It was good to have a little taste of normality, particularly with the UK running the ‘eat out to help out’ scheme in August which coincided with my trip. A few days of sunshine was a good little fix and the perfect escape after three months of home-working in which I rarely left the house.
After August I still had 11 days of annual leave to use before the end of the year. I’d already optimistically booked off Thanksgiving week but as November draws closer it’s safe to say I won’t be visiting Washington. If the border re-opens this year that’d be a miracle!
The other six days I split in to two with the aim of a long weekend in October and a long weekend in December. I figured the first of those I’d travel somewhere and was toying with whether to stay in the UK or go abroad.
Work swayed my decision a little bit, I was more than happy working from home but work asked me to return to the office in September and it changed my mindset I think. I feel like an office environment with 100 odd other people is far riskier than the minimal social interaction I’ve had over the past six months.
So I kept an open mind about getting on a plane in October – still considering the Covid situation of course. With ever-changing circumstances and travel restrictions I narrowed my options down to a long weekend in the UK, Turkey or Gibraltar – leaning in favour of a trip out of the country.
Growing restrictions in the UK, such as curfews, only emphasised that thinking and it was a toss-up between Turkey and Gibraltar in the end. Both countries had low cases and the latter has still had 0 Covid deaths – zero! Incredible really.
I wanted to leave the decision as late as possible so I wasn’t stung by any restrictions or quarantine. I’ve been itching to go to Turkey for a while now so it seemed like the early favourite but something in the back of my mind must have swayed me in another direction as I eventually opted to book a trip to Gibraltar! A few days later Turkey unexpectedly went on to the quarantine list, it was a bit of a shock given the numbers but I felt a huge sigh of relief when the news broke.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I flew out to Gibraltar for another four night trip and a long-weekend in a country I’d never been to. With the situation getting increasingly worse in the UK I actually felt better about going abroad than had I actually booked a ‘staycation’.
I enjoyed Gibraltar a lot, I could definitely have stayed there for longer and just not come home haha. I’ll be writing up about that trip next time on the blog, hopefully very soon, and then getting back in to the swing of things and continuing the “big 3-0” series.
Stay tuned!
Jason
Jason likes to travel 
So nice to find a blog post update from you Jason. A lovely read whilst eating my.lunch!
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Thank you! Managed to squeeze it out during my lunch hour, hopefully I’ll get back to posting weekly now. Hope you have a good weekend!
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Nice to get an update from you and I look forward to hearing about Gibraltar! There’s been no international travel for me since February and it doesn’t look like I’ll be crossing any national borders for quite a while.
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Thank you! Hopefully you can make the most of some local exploration. There’s still so much uncertainty in international travel at the moment.
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Hi, Jason! I’m glad to hear from you again; it’s been a while. And I’m glad to know all is well with you, especially considering how crazy it’s been for the past few month! Can’t wait to read all about your trip to Gibraltar. Thanks for sharing and have a good day. Aiva
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Thank you! It has been a crazy time, Gibraltar was nice though. Hope you’ve been keeping well, have a great weekend!
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Welcome back to blogging! You’ve been missed. I’m glad to hear your instincts paid off and you made the right choice. I’m still undecided about going to Arizona (or maybe California) one week from today. I do not like this last minute travel business!
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Thank you! I’m hoping I’ll get back to posting weekly at least, plus reading posts as I’ve not been doing that either.
Yeah, I hate having to plan so last minute but if you plan too early you end up having to cancel. Hope you can figure out your trip!
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Welcome back, Jason! I think we’re all feeling a little claustrophobic by this point. We made a quick local escape recently, but even that might be out of reach soon as numbers continue to rise 😦
I’ve honestly never given Gibraltar much consideration as a destination, so I’m looking forward to your post! I’m sure it’ll give me lots of travel inspiration.
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Ah thank you! It’s the same here, I think we’ll be forced in to another lockdown before the end of the year.
To be honest, it’s not somewhere I’d really given much thought to visiting either. Covid forced my hand a bit but it was a nice surprise 🙂
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Same happen to me. My last post was in July and I just posted again today. Time is going by fast this year.
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It has gone by pretty quickly! Good to see you’re back too though! 🙂
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Thank you! It’s good to see your back too!
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It’s so hard planning anything at the moment, isn’t it? At least you didn’t book Turkey. A really good friend of mine has just been working out there on a resort and she had to come home after only being out there for a month or so, which was a shame.
P.S. I’m also being Not Very Good at blogging at the moment… doesn’t really feel like there’s a lot to write about, to be honest!
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Definitely. I can imagine resorts like that are suffering, it’s a shame having to cut a trip short because of it.
Yeah, that’s understandable. With the exception of the Gibraltar post I’m rarely up to date anyway so I’ve still got 2018 and 2019 travels I can write about but I hadn’t been too motivated to. I’ll keep a look out for your posts when you get back in to the swing of it 🙂
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Good fortune that you booked Gibraltar over Turkey. You had that gut feeling for good reason!
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Absolutely! It took me five months to get a refund from Virgin earlier in the year for a cancelled flight so I was determined to leave Turkey or Gibraltar as late as possible to avoid a repeat situation. Fortunately Gibraltar worked out well 🙂
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