Journeys Are My Diary

Life, Adventures, Entertainment and more - A little bit of everything blog!

Road Trip Tips

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I am always looking for spontaneous adventure! Next week is my birthday and I’ve looked at so many ideas from driving to Disneyland Paris, to hopping on a ferry to Ireland or Amsterdam. There are themeparks to visit, restaurants to eat at and shops to go shopping – all of these would require me driving there and I’m absolutely fine with that. I just love a last minute decision. Age UK (charity) recently posted these tips, but I wanted to share mine with you!

For the cheapest offers, plan in advance! I know I said spontaneous adventures are my favourite, but a couple of years ago we went to Disneyland Paris and planning in advance definitely saved us a heap of money. We got a cheap Travelodge on the way out, a cheap offer on the actual holiday and also planning meant we could save! Our Travelodge on the night out, was £30 compared to the last minute one on the way back (£80!). Our holiday was £1 for the Ferry travel and £400 for the holiday, compared to the usual cost of about £1000 on the Disneyland Paris website.

Break up the journey and takes lots of stops! As with above, road trips are all very well but to really enjoy it, breaking it up (and ultimately extending the holiday) can make it way more enjoyable. Travel a large part of your journey and then do an overnight stopover. Set off early the next day fresh and ready for another good long drive. Likewise on the way home, do a good chunk of the driving but stop and sleep before finishing your journey fresh in the morning. Everyone gets tired and for the passengers in the car, they can sleep anyway. However its important that the driver definitely catches a few Zzzzs.

Always pack food and drink for the trip. Of course its always good to stop for a coffee break or even McDonalds but ensuring you have food and drink for the journey is also a good tip. Kids get hungry and thirsty easily anyway but its always good to have something to keep you refreshed. No matter where you’re road tripping to, you’re always subject to traffic jams! You don’t want to get caught out in two hours of traffic with nothing to eat or drink!

Take a SatNav or smartphone capable of navigation. Okay so technology isn’t foolproof but in this day and age its definitely a lot easier to have some sort of navigation helping you. As a driver its impossible to concentrate on the road and read a map, and road signs aren’t always that useful. A good SatNav will keep you alert and listening, while also helping you to get where you’re going. It might not be the best route, the fastest route or even the most sensible, but chances are it will stop you getting lost – or if you get lost, help you get unlost!

Keep an eye on petrol and prices! Petrol is incredibly expensive and so if you’re taking a road trip the costs can add up. Try not to leave buying petrol to the last minute as the chances are you’ll pay through the nose for it. Petrol stations near to airports, docks etc are likely to be more expensive as they know people often need petrol before immediately going somewhere or immediately coming back. Fill the car whenever you find it somewhere cheap and make the most of the lower price. Also cars tend to run better on the top end of the tank than they do on the bottom end!

Change your plans if necessary. As with all the advice above, change your plans if necessary. We originally planned our road trip to Paris with an overnight stay beforehand but a drive straight through the night on the way home. However when we got back to Dover I realised I was too tired to drive us home and instead we checked into a Travelodge (the expensive one). It may well have cost us twice as much as the pre-booked Travelodge, but it possibly saved our lives if I’d have driven tired.

This weekend we’re traveling down to London and I can’t wait! We leave at 8pm Friday night (so a day time nap is on the cards) and we’re staying Friday night and Saturday in Travelodges. We’re going to MCM Comic Con and also to see Phantom of the Opera. This is my birthday treat and I can’t wait!

Black Tied – silver cuff bracelet

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Have you heard of Black Tied? If not then you are missing out! Black Tied is a jewellery website, selling beautiful pieces of jewellery. I’ve window shopped their website for a long time, finally making my first purchase last week!

When it comes to shopping, I’m either so indecisive that I never end up purchasing, or I’m so impulsive that I end up spending far too much money! I’ve umm’d and ahh’d over what to buy on Black Tied, items like this Starfish ring and this Infinity symbol necklace, previously appealing. However, when I saw the item I actually ending up purchasing, it just called to me… literally (sort of… haha).

http://www.blacktied.co.uk/collections/bracelets/products/life-is-a-journey-not-a-destination-silver-affirmation-cuff-bracelet

This was my purchase! Please excuse the blank space, its a stock photo from their website. This cuff bracelet is silver and says “Happiness is a Journey, not a Destination” which is pretty much the tag line of my blog. It costs £14 but I was lucky enough to have a 20% off code, which made it a steal!

I’m not much of a jewellery wearer, which you can probably guess if you’re a regular reader of my blog. I don’t tend to bother with earrings very often, I have one ring that I wear constantly as Chris bought it for me and then I have 3 charm bracelets (2 Chamilia and 1 Pandora) which I only wear during school holidays (I can’t wear jewellery for work and its too much faff to put on and off every day).

That said, I love this bracelet!!!

Now I want to make it very clear, that I wasn’t gifted this product by Black Tied, I wasn’t asked to give a review. This is a genuine purchase that I have made. When I opened up the bracelet, I put it on immediately. It’s so comfy that after a few minutes I even forgot I was wearing it! Not only that, but its so pretty. The silver is shiny, the lettering is really crisp and clear. I can honestly say that when I put it on, I didn’t take it off for 3 days, and even that was only because I had to for work!

If you like jewellery and even if you don’t, you should definitely check out Black Tied. They have beautiful necklaces, bracelets, earrings and rings – all at very reasonable prices! Postage is just £2.99 too so that’s definitely a bonus!

Day Two – bloglagging…

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Day Two and I’m already struggling to find time to blog! Not a good start. I suppose it doesn’t help that I haven’t told my other half I’m writing a blog and therefore when he says “let’s sit and watch a movie”, I can’t exactly say “but I have my blog to update!” I mean, its not a secret, but I just haven’t mentioned it. Maybe its because I don’t want him reading it? Or perhaps cos I don’t know how long I’ll stick at it? Or even just that he might not get why I’m bothering? Anyway he’s settled down for an hour or so on his Xbox and so I figured the first thing I would do is update my blog.

So I’ve had several things go through my head about what I want to write about. I should probably write them down before I forget to be honest, but I’m going to start with making this blog, its name and a fun little generator I found while trying to come up with a name.

The address of my blog is “journeys are my diary” (journeysaremydiary.blogspot.com). This is actually the first name I came up with, via a little help from a tumblr name generator. Though I’d wanted to start a blog for a few days, names always seem to be the hard part as far as I’m concerned. I go through phases of usernames and when life moves on a little, you sometimes look back and think “that just isn’t really suitable any more”. That’s how I felt about my last wave of usernames (which was dontletmefade for anyone interested) and so a new blog called for a change. I googled “how to come up with a good name for a blog” and similar searches, and on only the second or third link I clicked, came across a name generator for tumblr usernames (I think via yahoo answers actually).

The url for the generator is this – http://www.mookychick.co.uk/games/tumblr-name-generator.php
You don’t need to enter any information, it just provides you with random names. Its actually pretty fun, clearly tumblr orientated (you’ll see what I mean if you use it) but actually sort of perfect for blog names too. “journeysaremydiary” was actually the first thing it threw up and for some reason I just liked it. I opened up a notepad file and copied the name down, beginning searching again – this time at 50 names a pop. I came across a few amusing ones and even a few other options. Two more I liked were “notsosecretcircus” (sort of feels like my life and house are a circus sometimes) and “dreamthinklive” (which seems like good words to live by). All of them were available on blogger, but I think the original one stuck with me the most and so I went for that.

‘Journeys are my diary’ seems to me like a good name for something that spans your whole life. By that I don’t necessarily mean all the years of my life, but more the whole spectrum that is my life. They say that Life is a Journey and not a Destination – the title I gave to my blog. However when I did a little googling I also found things like “Life is a journey and only you hold the map” or “Life is a journey, not a guided tour”. Not matter what the exact quote is though, the concept is the same. And therefore every journey (that makes up the life journey) are in essence, my diary entries. Ultimately this is the reason that I came up with and went with, my blog name.

I’m going to end it there as I have a few other things I should be doing. However as with today, tomorrow I will make an effort again, to at least make one blog entry. If you’re actually reading this, then thanks. I’m not sure how or why you’ve stumbled across it, but I’m flattered that you at least got this far.