Travel BlogCamp

Today, we continue with the series of posts on blogging experiences. I have often wondered why they appears to be so few Brits writing travel blogs considering we are a nation of people who like to travel. So, it was good to interview fellow British blogger Heather about her experiences.

Please introduce yourself

I’m Heather Cowper from Heather on her Travels. I live in Bristol, England and love to blog about my travels with friends and family, both in Europe and around the world. This year’s travels have included the French Alps, Berlin, Lebanon, Greece, Croatia and Brittany, not to mention a few trips in the UK.

I try and inspire people to enjoy the places I’ve been as well as giving them practical information about how to get there. I love to use lots of photos and am also starting to introduce travel videos and podcasts to the blog.

Why do you think it is that they are few UK travel bloggers compared with other countries?

I think the US seems to have a head start on us Brits when it comes to widespread use of the internet, but I’m sure we’ll be catching up soon. It’s surprising because the low-cost airlines mean it’s so easy and cheap for the English to travel widely.

You moved to your own hosted blog from Blogger, what are your experiences with this

For my first year of blogging I was on Blogger but I decided 9 months ago to move to a self-hosted blog on WordPress to provide a more professional and flexible foundation for developing my blog in the future. It took ages to transfer all my archives over as I did it manually – there are ways of automating this but I was scared of losing all my photos.

Since I did that, I haven’t looked back. There’s so much more you can do with WordPress and such a community out there helping to support and develop it as a platform. In retrospect I’d recommend everyone to start with WordPress, preferably on your own domain name. Although it can seem technically daunting, there are some great websites to help, and once you’re set up you don’t have to go through the pain of moving later.

What would you say are your biggest challenges as a blogger?

As a part time blogger with a full-time job and a family, I struggle to find the time to fit it all in. It’s become an all-consuming and addictive hobby and I don’t have time for much else (apart from travelling of course). The other challenge is working out the technical stuff related to setting up and developing a website, making videos and podcasts.

I’m constantly having to get help on forums and asking other bloggers to find out how to do the techie stuff and I recently enrolled on the Becomeablogger.com course to help overcome these barriers.

What do you enjoy about writing a travel blog?

I enjoy the creative side of writing and illustrating a post, sharing my experiences and hopefully raising a smile or a nod of recognition. I try to pass on what I’ve enjoyed about each place I visit. I always get a buzz when someone writes a comment saying how much they’ve enjoyed one of my articles.

It’s also great to make new friends across the blogosphere and feel you are part of the travel blogging community.