The Great British Blog Festival- Wednesday

Jun 9, 2010 by cafebebemama

I bring you a not-so-wordless-Wednesday for The Great British Blog Festival today.  Isn’t it fun to see all of the great posts about blogging?  You surely have been to visit Littlemummy, Littlemumpreneur, English Mum and Me, The Man and The Baby?  They’ve got brilliant posts on their sites as well…make sure to visit them after you read this brilliant offering today.

Today’s guest blogger is Victoria from It’s a Small World After All.  She and her lovely family are about to embark on an amazing trip around the world!  As she says on her glorious blog, “We are a family of five from London, planning to embark on a round the world trip in November this year. We will be travelling for about nine months before returning home in July 2011.” I love how Victoria is so CASUAL about this MAHOOSIVE adventure!  What an amazing experience for them all.  Here Victoria shares with us some of her travelling experiences with regards to blogging…

Travelling with a computer

My first entry into the blogging world was about three years ago via travel blogging. Through hanging out in the Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree forums, I became aware that people were writing online diaries of their trips. Being an ex-travel junkie, stuck at home with three children aged 5, 3 and 1, I couldn’t get enough of reading these blogs and would travel vicariously while my children napped.

Like parenting blogs, some travel blogs are online daily journals, whilst others are a series of articles about different aspects of their journey. Personally I find the latter more interesting, as I don’t usually feel the need to know what someone eats three times a day and there are only so many times I can read about the glories of Macchu Picchu without ever having visited. But sometimes I also pore over the details of the former, particularly when it’s a family travel blog. How do they cope with overnight trains? What do their children eat? What kind of luggage are they carrying?

The community aspect of travel blogging is very important, as with most blogging. Instead of parenting tips, travel bloggers share news of great guesthouses and interesting things to do. It’s a brilliant way of connecting with people all over the world, I know who to contact when I’m visiting Hawaii or New Zealand, and that they’ll tell me the best places for shave ice and sheep shearing. Travel bloggers have also been known to offer each other beds for the night. We almost had a Kiwi family with eight children to stay, but last year’s terrible summer chased them south to Greece before they made it to London. Hopefully we shall finally get to meet when we go to Auckland later this year.

Travel blogging can be logistically difficult. Many countries don’t have readily available Wi-Fi, and you can spend a lot of time hunting out the nearest McDonalds to upload a post. There is also a conflict between getting out there and doing stuff to actually write about, and writing about it. Hours spent behind the computer uploading all your gorgeous pictures are hours that could perhaps be better spent on the beach.

For me, blogging about our upcoming round the world trip is a way to make sense of it all, cope with the anticipation and excitement and keep a record for the future. We’ll be taking two netbooks with us so hopefully I’ll be able to keep blogging regularly as we travel. It will be a useful way for us to stay in touch with family and friends when we’re away, and when we come back we will have an amazing family album. A great bonus of my participation in the UK parent blogging community is that I’ll be able to take all of you with me.

Victoria Wallop has been blogging for over a year, mostly about travel stuff, at It’s a Small World After All.

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I CANNOT imagine undertaking something like the “It’s a Small World After All” family are about to undertake!  The stress of flying with ONE toddler to America & back is enough to knock me for six!  I can’t wait to see what they get up to.

Now for tomorrow’s blogger: Well, let’s see, she’s writing a wee post for us about anonymity which is THE hot topic in the blogging world these days (she’s so hip!).  She’s a former London lawyer who’s switched City Life for Scottish Life and is wondering how much fun being a SAHM to 3 will be?  Remember to pop back to see this lovely blogger…she’s got some gorgeous HATS as well!