This is the latest update to my site, which you can find on the Planning page.

One of my favourite parts of travelling is planning what I’m going to do and see. Whenever I get back from a trip, the first thing I do is whip out some guide books and start planning the next one.

Gone are the days when people went to a travel agent to put together a trip for them, the internet has made travel increasingly accessible, putting the onus on you to put together a great trip.

The problem is that with so much information available, where do you start? You’re probably being bombarded with photos from friends and strangers alike on social media of all sorts of wonderful places to visit both near and far. How do you see through all the noise to pick a great destination for you that fits your interests, time frame and budget?

On this page, I’ll explain how I put together an itinerary, find accommodation and choose restaurants for a trip. None of it is ground breaking or earth shattering, but sometimes you just need a few hints and pointers to get you going.

I don’t use any fancy tools for planning my trips, so you won’t need to download lots of apps, you just need an excel sheet or a piece of paper and access to the internet.

First up, how to get started. I’ll add further steps over the coming days to give you a full, step-by-step guide to planning your trip.

How I get started

1. Setting a time and cost budget

This will depend somewhat on your budget and your travel aims. I’m hoping to visit every country in the world during my lifetime, so I’ve been trying to set a pace of 8 new countries a year. This is quite ambitious and I don’t always manage it when I’m trying to fit trips in with friends and family, travelling for work, or going abroad for weddings.

I set an annual budget of £7,000 for my holidays. For some people this will seem excessive and to others it will seem minimal, it’s just the budget I set for myself each year and you can come up with your own depending on your own financial position. I’ll talk about how I set yearly and monthly budgets for myself in a later post.

I also set myself a travel time budget each year. I get 25 days annual leave from work, plus weekends, 8 bank holidays and I can buy or roll over up to 10 more days up to a total of 40 days a year. So technically I have could have up to a maximum of 152 days a year to play with.

Again, this will depend person to person and I appreciate that I am luckier than some to have that additional flexibility. In a typical year I keep my annual leave somewhere between 30 and 35 days.

I map out my proposed holidays for each holiday year at work (mine runs October to September…I know, weird right?). I try to make as much use of bank holidays as possible to maximise my time away during the year so that I’m only having to take off 4 days to make up a week.

This is how my plans have looked the last few years:

Holidays 2014
Destination	Month	Days	Days leave
Amsterdam	Apr	3	1
Mallorca	Jun	5	3
Istanbul	Oct	3	15
Cambodia	Nov	6	“
Venice	Dec	3	“

 

Holidays 2015
Destination	Month	Days	Days leave
Barcelona	Mar	2	0
Dubai	Apr	5	0
Lithuania	Jun	4	2
Mallorca	Jun	5	3
Slovenia	July	4	2
Copenhagen	Aug	8	4
Tallinn	Sep	“	“
Stockholm	Oct	“	“
Bologna & Ravenna	Oct	4	2
Glasgow	Oct	6	4
Budapest	Nov	2	0
Sri Lanka	Dec	14	8

 

Holidays 2016
Destination	Month	Days	Days leave
Iceland	Mar	5	0
Lisbon	Apr	3	0
Mallorca	Jun	5	3
Portugal	Jul	3	1
Prague	Jul	3	1
Abu Dhabi	Oct	10	8
Seychelles	Oct	“	“
Malaysia	Dec	15	11
Myanmar	Jan	“	“

 

Holidays 2017
Destination	Month	Days	Days leave
Croatia	May	6	4
Romania	May	7	4
Macedonia	Jun	2	0
Riga	Jul	2	0
Italy	Jul	5	3
Israel	Sep	7	5
Dominican Republic	Nov	10	8
Germany	Dec	2	0