Happy New Year!
An unbelievable 10 years to the day since Chris and I took the first flight which kicked off our year of full time round-the-world travels.
Buzzing with excitement we set off from Heathrow airport at around 08.30 on 1st January 2016 bound for Los Angeles to begin our adventures. We nearly missed our first flight too which wouldn’t have been the best start… we duly arrived at the Virgin check-in desk at the recommended 3 hours before our departure time but found ourselves in the midst of a huge swarming crowd of travellers, all wanting to check in! We waited our turn but time was ticking on and eventually we had to be rushed and escorted through to the gate so we didn’t miss the flight!
At the start of the second full decade of From Blue to Green I am as keen as ever to ensure the next 10 years are as jam packed with travel as the previous 10.
For 2026 I already have much of my travel agenda in place, partly as a result of recent Black Friday offers! Essentially the plan is: two holidays with Chris; one with my daughter Zoe and two with my friend Bridget 🙂 and hopefully a couple of shorter weekends or mini breaks thrown in (in fact, one is booked already).
Trips planned for 2026
- St Vincent & the Grenadines with Chris
- A European break with Zoe
- A walking weekend in the Malvern Hills with Bridget
- Trekking in Sumatra with Bridget
- Via Francigena in Switzerland with Chris, Russell & Roza
- Exploring Uzbekistan with Bridget
Budget travel will continue to feature in our 2026 travels and this begins with a joint holiday to St Vincent & the Grenadines. For this trip I’ve pretty much wiped out all of my Virgin points having secured free flights as a combination of a reward companion voucher and paying out most of my points balance. Caribbean islands are not cheap so it will be quite a challenge to keep our spending costs down whilst still making the most of this beautiful and exotic destination.
As mentioned my daughter Zoe and I are planning a trip – we haven’t yet booked anything but Malta is a strong contender. I went to Malta back in 1992 but as I couldn’t find any photos, I tried using WordPress AI which generated the above magnificent image!
Next up, Bridget and I have a 3 day walking weekend in the Malvern Hills, a corner of England that I have never previously visited. Part of our local walking group, this should be a fun weekend.
Trying to balance budget with my life long travel cravings, Bridget and I will also be venturing much further afield with an exciting adventure trekking through the jungles of Sumatra! This will be my first visit back to Indonesia since Chris and I went to Bali and Java in 2016.
Later in the year Chris and I will join our friends Russell and Roza for another stint of walking the Via Francigena, aka ‘Road to Rome’ but this time we will be trekking our way through the mountains and valleys of Switzerland. The last time Chris and I were in Switzerland we experienced -20 degrees as a result of the ‘Beast from the East’ weather system! Hopefully this time my photos won’t be similar to the above!
And I’ll be visiting a ‘Stan’ at last! The ‘Stans’ of Central Asia have been on my travel wish list for a few years and 2026 will be the year of my first visit to one of them, this being 11 days in Uzbekistan. The nearest photo I have which vaguely resembles what I imagine Uzbekistan architecture to be like is probably the above picture taken in Tbilisi, Georgia!
I hope you enjoyed a sneak preview of our (or mostly my) travel plans. I recently came across an article which suggested that neuroscience studies have shown that your brain releases dopamine, the happy chemical, when you are planning or dreaming of travel. Hurrah 🙂
frombluetogreen.com 