STA travelbuzz’s Travel Blog Hall of Fame
Yes It’s time for us to wheel out another another example of travel blog excellence to encourage us poor lumpen plebs to transform our pedestrian travel journals into things of sparkling splendour.
The new entry into our coveted Hall of Fame is Old World Wandering. In 1997, Iain Manley and Claire van den Heever travelled overland from London to Shangai, passing through the UK, Western Europe, India and South East Asia, covering a foot-blistering number of famous cities as well as smaller towns and rural villages, and recording their journey here. It’s quite simply the most beautifully written travel blog we’ve found so far- evocative, thoughtful and entertaining, peppered with quotations, anecdotes and an incredible level of detail - the portraits of the locals they meet along the way are particularly powerful.
The design is elegant and easy to search, with a map of their journey and professional-standard photos illustrating each destination. Most importantly, it is clean and uncluttered, leaving the fantastic writing to be the focus of the blog, with each piece prompting plenty of comments from fellow travellers.
And Claire shows that blogging isn’t just important for sharing stories with others, but encourages a much more switched-on approach to adventuring: ‘a habit of writing about my travels will hopefully unlock the thoughts that may otherwise dissolve in my head.’
Who could ask for better reason to become a travel blogger?
