Spreading the community feeling

After a busier year, some concerted blogging effort, and the resulting burgeoning in new reading material and interesting blogs to peruse, I’ve been nominated for the Liebster award by Holly of Adventures with Holly. I’ve followed with interest her adventures in Korea and around east Asia for the last few months. I also regularly enjoy her Taste of Korea Tuesday posts about food; a favourite topic of mine!

The aim of the award is to let you share a little about yourself and some of your favourite reads with the rest of the blogosphere. So, with thanks to Holly, here goes.

1. Thank and link the blogger(s) who nominated you.
2. Nominate 11 bloggers who have less than 200 followers who you think deserve this award and link their blogs too.
3. Answer 11 questions posted by the blogger who nominated you and also ask 11 new questions for your nominees to answer.
4. Notify your nominees.

The nominees:

Photographers

angle and views Great photography and stories from parts of Europe I’ve never visited and would love to see. Check out the Iceland images in particularly.

James Herring’s Weekly Blog shares a number of my passions: photography and cycling being two of them. I also love the regular reflections on days out around Edinburgh and Scotland, areas close to my heart.

I’m Over the Hill A new find for me this week, full of gorgeous photos and including TP tips for adventurers. I will be tuning in regularly.

Writers

Waves and Echoes This is a fantastic writing project about what it means to be a woman, particularly what it means to be a woman in Egypt. Check it out.

Lizzy Acker! Part of the writing team behind my favourite WordPress read, The Tusk. See her own contributions and more here.

Manningtree Archive Officially over the limit of followers, but full of great articles on films and stars from the Golden Age of films.

Travellers

The Plucky Pixie It’s been a while since the Pixie put pen to paper, but it’s a useful, interesting and pretty travel blog which was very helpful when planning my recent adventures. I’m keeping it bookmarked for future travels in the region, too.

Tim Rann’s Blog The responsible nomad with stories from Indonesia.

Girl Lilikoi is another blogger whose travels keep me coming back for more. Especially good for cafe and restaurant adventures around south east Asia.

…and all the rest of my regular reads already have too many followers to pass on this particular award. They are that good. And soon I imagine the above blogs will also tickle a ton of taste buds.

…and your questions are:

1. Night Owl or Early Bird?
2. Complete this sentence: Saturday nights are for….
3. What three qualities do you value most in others?
4. What three qualities do you value most in yourself?
5. What’s your most prized travel memento?
6. Which of your own blog posts is your favourite? (Post a link for us all to enjoy)
7. Have you ever been really proud of an achievement that no one else recognized?
8. Books or e-readers?
9. What’s your dream destination?
10. Why do you blog?
11. What makes you happy?

The questions from Holly

1. What’s one place in the world you are dying to go back to, and why? I would love to go back to Ayampe, on the Ruta del Spondylus in Ecuador, where I learned to surf, had my backpack eaten through by a rat, and spent a week dossing in the best possible company while recovering from the post CELTA blues. In the real world, it’s the physical place and time that comes closest to the Cave (the, “Find your cave” cave, like in Fight Club).
2. Share a funny travel story of a time when your plans went horribly wrong! Oh my! ‘Horribly wrong’ I’ve got a few of, and ‘funny’ I’ve got plenty of, but ‘funny’ + ‘horribly wrong’ limits the selection. I wrote a post about a hideous travel planning mistake which happened when I was taking my dad to Machu Picchu, but there was also the time my friend and I took the afternoon bus from Amsterdam to Castricum on the Dutch coast, only to find that it was the last bus of the day and there were no hotels there….! We met some very lovely Dutch people who took us to their mum’s place for dinner and a shower and then drove us to the more tourist-friendly Zandvoort, took us out for the night and found us a hotel. It was all pre-Facebook, so we never saw or heard from them again!
3. What qualities do you most value in other people? Self-confidence and honesty. Being a nice person is good, too, but wildly overrated.
4. Cats or dogs? Cats. See my addendum to #3 – these two are probably linked.
5. What are your five most indispensable travel items? 1. Towel, a lá Douglas Adams’ Ford Prefect. Geekily, it pretty much is only that reason as I tend to book places that provide towels these days. 2. Camera. Whether I take the fancy new DSLR or my fancy, not-so-new point and shoot, I love taking holiday snaps, and I love blogging about my journeys. Which leads me to 3. Very old Acer laptop. It’s so old it’s not worth nicking, I wiped it and replaced the OS a while ago so it doesn’t contain any information I would miss if stolen. Also, it runs Linux so for as long as it remains in my possession it will never grow old. Handy for blogging, checking information and making reservations on the internet, and keeping electronic copies of travel guides. 4. Savlon and a roll of medical tape. I love hiking, surfing, snorkelling and wearing flip-flops on my travels. All of these have at some point led to the use of Savlon and plasters or bandages. I won’t leave home without them! 5. A torch – preferably wind-up. You just never know when you’ll need one.
6. Would you rather spend a month in an icy winter wonderland or a sultry, exotic locale with sauna-like temperatures, and why? Definitely the latter. I’ve spent most of my life in England; more specifically in Manchester, where people sound like Jon Snow* and dress like they live at Castle Black. Given a choice, I’ll go anywhere you can eat bananas and coconuts off the tree and wear little more than your undies.
7. Who is the best travel companion you’ve ever had? Another tough call. I’ve had great trips with friends, and gone on extensive travels with two different partners (obviously not at the same time). I’ve had great trips with both of my parents (also not at the same time). And the times that I’ve shared travels with strangers I’ve met on the road (or beach, or in a park) are the reason that I still love to travel. But at heart, I am a solo traveller, so I’m going to say the best travel companion for me is my own backpack. This may also shed more light on questions #3 and #4.
8. What do you like most about your home city or country? Despite the answer to #6, I love Manchester, weather and all. For a small city it has a great diversity of things to do, places to go and things to see. It’s close to two of the most beautiful parts of the country; the Lake District and the Peak District, both great for walking and finding ‘ye olde English country pub / tea shoppe.’ The city itself has some beautifully preserved historical buildings and a wealth of history in its canal ways, squares and parks. It also has a huge student population so there’s a vibrant and eclectic nightlife.
9. I’ve adapted one question from Isabel’s Would You Rather post- would you rather bike between North and South America or across Eurasia? Can I do both? Mmm. Well, I’ve travelled a lot of the Panamericana Sur, so for the sake of variety, I’m going to say Eurasia: London to Shanghai. Via Turkey.
10. Who is/are your celebrity crush(es)? Male: Robert Downey Jr. Female: Salma Hayek.
11. What are your biggest challenges/problems when it comes to blogging? Time. Also sometimes inspiration for writing my own stuff, but that’s mostly because of lack of time to do anything worth blogging about.

*People from Manchester don’t really sound like Jon Snow. He sounds like some kind of vague northern mish-mash of mostly Yorkshire, but how many readers would get obscure Yorkshire references? Also, the only people in Manchester who dress like they’re at Castle Black are the goths. And even they’ve gone more Emo than Sisters of Mercy since my time.