When I saw this Blog4Trek competition, I was pretty psyched. Trip to ‘Mericuh? Check. Enter by blogging? Love it. The topic is on travel? Lovely, loads of fun to write.
But then I started thinking about it. The topic is “What are your weekend away essentials?”- fairly innocuous, nice little glimpse into your travelling style and juicy enough to get your blogging teeth into. Right?
Wrong. The day I wrote out a draft, I was getting more and more irate. Nothing I wrote was actually an essential, more what I thought would sound snazzy or impressive. And hardly any of it was stuff that I actually took on a weekend away.
“Always take black skinnies.” I chirped. “Great for clubbing through to camping, and no spill marks!” Then I went to Margate for the weekend, and packed a floaty pink dress and the only other clean thing I had in my room while I was packing- a tartan scarf. No black jeans in sight- and it was for the best. It would have been weird to rock up at a wedding wearing biker-chic.
“Don’t bother with your fancy camera and tablet, you’ll only forget the charger!” I giggled. Then I remembered my last trip to York, where I got more work done on the coach than I think I did during my entire three years at University- all on my tablet- and still had the most gorgeous time wandering around tiny side streets.
“Take a book- but choose wisely!” I squeeked, ignoring the fact I’ve been on a total reading-dry-spell for nearly two months, forgetting that my last trip to visit Oxford-based friends resulted in me being too hungover to board the right train, never mind settle into a cosy novel.
Annoyed, I deleted my draft. It turns out I’m not very good at following my own advice, and my weekends away are usually haphazard, last-minute, don’t-forget-the-train-tickets, oh-god-I-hope-I-brought-underwear, where-did-I-say-the-B&B-was packing affairs. Great. This meant I was going to have to write something corny about “pack only your sense of adventure“, when in reality, I want to say “Oh who cares, it’s only two nights. If you brought odd shoes or left your camera under your bed, you’ve got two days of relaxing, catching up, exploring or adventuring in front of you to make up for it. It’s not a bad compromise.”
