CURRENT MISSION

To have an excellent but affordable adventure with my other half on the way home so that we start the next stage of life and love with some amazing memories and a few bucks left in the bank. New-found friends through travelling are a very welcome addition!

ABOUT ME

I used to live and work in Scotland and Ireland, and headed to beautiful New Zealand to start a new adventure in 2010. Craig worked in England and packed up to go travelling to New Zealand in 2011, via a bike trip across the USA. We met in Wellington and lived and worked there until November 2013, and we're now engaged and travelling together, as a kind of extended pre-wedding honeymoon. Craig worked on a contract in Melbourne for a few months and I was on a tourist visa because I was "too old" to work (rude!), so that limited our earning capacity somewhat. Too old indeed...
We're in the last 2 months of 7 months of travelling on the way home to the UK, before finding jobs, getting married and having babies in whatever order that all happens. We've been through Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, the Pacific North-West of America and have recently arrived in Canada. We are trying to do things on our remaining savings, so we'd be grateful to meet some generous interesting souls along the way.

PHILOSOPHY

It's nice to be nice.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

We're hoping to be intermittent surfers for now to help make the travel funds go a little further, and when we're back in the UK and settled with our own place, to return the favour by being hosts and just generally include a little 'pay it forward' in our lives. We plan to live in/near Edinburgh, which is a beautiful historic city that we will be delighted to show off to fellow travellers.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

A handful so far (starting New Year's Eve, 2014), all of which have been fantastic. We started off doing Airbnb in Australia and loved it. We were very fortunate to have really low accommodation costs all through South East Asia and were happy to pay the prices to support developing countries, but we would love to try Couchsurfing now as we've met really cool people through Airbnb and know there are equally lovely souls who are Couchsurfing hosts.

Interests

Craig is a tech geek who loves most things web-related. He's also into photography, whisky, proper pints of bitter and craft beer, football, tennis, Formula 1 and cycling. He's also pretty good at poker, and thrashing me at pool (too often), and boggle, which I am surprisingly bad at despite working with books and literacy.

I'm an avid reader, love music and sending proper postcards, and really enjoy wine and cooking. We both love movies and travel adventures too. I attempt to do lots of walking and outdoorsy things when I'm not consuming wine and cheese, and am a big fan of traditional board games like scrabble, trivial pursuit and cranium. I recently added Ticket To Ride to that list.

• books
• photography
• cooking
• wine
• cheese
• beer
• walking
• technology
• movies
• board games
• traveling
• billiards
• poker
• music
• cycling
• skydiving
• soccer
• tennis

Music, Movies, and Books

My favourite book is A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving, and Craig is pretty fond of Harry Potter!
We're very varied in our music tastes: classical, dance, indie, rock, electronic, folk....we're pretty easy going. Craig loves Daft Punk, Adele, Kina Grannis, Fleetwood Mac, Zero Seven and Royksopp, and I love Arcade Fire, Foster The People, Fleet Foxes and Groove Armada. That's very much scratching the surface! We pretty much like most things, apart from ska and drum and bass.

Craig is a big fan of animation and Zach Braff stuff, and re-watches Firefly and Serenity whenever he can. He's also a huge fan of Matilda and Bedknobs and Broomsticks!
I like comedies, character-driven dramas, and quirky movies, particularly Wes Anderson films. Films I will watch at any opportunity include, in no particular order, Jaws, Amelie, Blazing Saddles, Animal House and The Wonder Boys.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Craig's is cycling across America, mine is skydiving.

Teach, Learn, Share

As much as possible!

What I Can Share with Hosts

Craig can share web skills, photography tips, and general travel advice. We can both share travel and work abroad advice, cooking and cleaning, and I can show you how to make a friendship bracelet! I'm pretty good at ironing and sewing on the odd button at a push.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Poland, Samoa, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tonga, United Kingdom, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, United Kingdom