CURRENT MISSION

Paying off our travels back in 2011

ABOUT ME

We are a little family of 3 from sleepy North Wales who dream of travelling the world, living simply and exploring the unknown with our cheeky toddler in tow.

Matt and I met 5 years ago through the skydiving club at Liverpool University, so that spontaneous, adventurous thrill-seeking nature has always been deeply embedded in who we are as a couple. It has always been our mutual dream to travel together and we had plans to take off for a year once I had graduated from university, but our dreams were temporarily put on hold when our little surprise came along in 2008! Following Theo’s arrival, we moved from the city of Liverpool to the slightly quieter hills of North Wales and our focus changed to the ever-challenging task of becomming parents. However, our dream never left us- and when Theo was just over a year old, we made the decision to move in with Matt’s dad in order to save money for our venture.

After a year of scraping together what we could, we were still frustratingly far from our goal. Trying to save in the midst of the recession was a struggle and we quickly learnt that even working doesn’t come cheap when you factor in nursery costs and commuting. Desperate for our own space once again, we moved out after a year of saving to our current home and once again, our travelling dream slipped even further from our grasp. For a while, we considered abandoning it altogether in favour of placing roots for ourselves and investing our feeble savings into a mortgage- but soon found that even mortgages were few and far between in the current economic climate. We’d hit a brick wall- and the world was looking smaller.

New Years Eve, 2011, Matt had been idly browsing the internet and chanced to mention that there were flights to Canada going cheaply. In fact, he’d been looking for a few days out of interest but frustratingly even in that short space of time, prices had begun to creep up. Fuelled by our New Years Eve drinks and the threat of time slipping from us, we started to dare to dream again. We had become frustrated with the years of dreaming and no action; we desperately wanted, and needed, to do something, anything. Before we had even had the time to fully consider our decision, we had done it- a moment of fleeting madness, perhaps!- and booked our outbound flights to Calgary, Canada. We weren’t sure what we would do, where we would go or how long for- but we had a starting point. We had snatched back our dream.

As yet, we don’t have a return flight or a concrete plan of action. Restricted by our finances, we know it can’t be the full year of touring the globe that we had originally dreamt of; but it’s a step in the right direction, a taster, something to satisfy our craving for escapism! Our current hope is to do a minimum of 6 weeks, combining cycling with trains to work our way across Canada and then down the west coast of America, ending at San Francisco. However, we have no idea where it could lead to- and that’s part of the thrill for us. Perhaps we can stretch our time and finances further and extend the trip; perhaps we can come back, save for another 6 months and then go again somewhere else with more experience and an appetite for travel. The feeling of not knowing can be terrifying- but it’s also exhilerating!

Our outbound date is 30th April 2011 and I hope you enjoy following our journey as we piece together our route, plan, prepare and train for our expedition and then undertake the tour itself. We’d love to hear from anyone with similar experiences and will welcome all the support we can get from family, friends and followers everywhere!

Becki, Matt and Theo.

PHILOSOPHY

Get up and go.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

We couch surfed as much as possible whilst cycle touring around North America in 2011, and met loads of really cool people! It's great that there are so many truly generous and caring people in the world.

Our house is always open to couch surfers, and we often host cycle tourings through Warm Showers to. Summer 2012 brought 4 groups to our home, and we had a great time with all of them :)

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

We must have stayed with 20-30 different hosts in the 5 months spend travelling in 2011. Such a great range of people, all truly unique and fun.

The most generous experience came from a girl we thought was in Newport, USA. Except it turned out she was travelling in India, but went completely out of her way to accommodate us and somehow managed to speak to her parents who weren't couchsurfers and persuaded them to take us. Her family were ace, they all came running out the house to greet us and we felt like movie stars or something!

Interests

Cycling, running, technology, photography, the great outdoors, & playing with toy cars (our little boy)

• photography
• running
• drinking
• clubbing
• flying
• technology
• traveling
• eating out
• cars
• investing
• outdoor activities
• cycling
• skydiving
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Currently reading The Stand.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Lots of skydiving... flying around the sky with you friends and flying through the clouds with only your body to control your flight is an incredible feeling, especially when massively hungover from the night before!