ABOUT TRAVEL JUNKIE GIRL
A UK travel blogger with a passion for arts, culture and heritage and a love of the Great Outdoors. A proponent for slow travel, Travel Junkie Girl seeks ‘off the beaten track’ places whilst indulging in a touch of affordable luxury.
Hey there reader…
First of all – I want to say thank you for landing on my blog, and if you’re here, you obviously want to know a little bit more about me and what you’ll find on Travel Junkie Girl.
My Kind of Travel and Writing
My name is Tilly Jaye, aka Travel Junkie Girl and I’m a UK travel blogger with a passion for anything arty and cultural – my list of interests is sky high!
I am also an artist and craftsperson – I draw, I paint, I sew and I’m a cross-stitch fiend. I love embroidery and create all sorts of handmade textile fine art cards and gifts. Oh, and I have a slightly unhealthy love of jigsaws.
I have a passion for photography and am definitely a self confessed travel junkie! I adore being outdoors too – wandering the millions of footpaths criss-crossing the UK with an OS map in hand and until recently a dog by my side. Unfortunately I lost my beloved pooch Roger suddenly to cancer in April 2020. You can read all about my favourite travels with Roger here.
I write predominantly about the UK as I love my home country so much, but I do venture out into continental Europe from time to time too.
I find that as a massive culture buff, I am addicted to European travel as our cultures are so varied. As a result I have not travelled beyond Europe and North America (YET!)
I love really getting immersed in a place, so the concept of slow travel is hugely appealing to me, spending weeks in a place, rather than days. I regularly go back to places I’ve been before just to see and do more there and to feel like I’ve really discovered a place. I’m not one for rushing through a tick list or country counting.
I am a good ole English Northerner so on my blog you’ll find a huge focus on Cheshire (where I live) and the North of England and Wales. And I’m afraid to say I’m a perfectionist, which I’m sure all other perfectionists will concur is both a blessing and a curse. (Cheers Dad for passing on that trait!) I won’t feel like I’ve finished my post and done a place justice if I haven’t gone in to detail providing lots of relevant information – my posts regularly top 3000 words!
My Background
My creativity definitely spurned this innate need to travel. From an early age, my creativity showed itself in all sorts of forms – playing instruments (flute and piano), amateur dramatics, reading, writing, drawing, painting and making things, from bat boxes (one wet and windy day) to candles. It became obvious as time went on that Art was my thing and I was good at it!
I was lucky enough to have parents who drove me around the country to see exhibitions and after spending a couple of hours in a gallery somewhere, we’d go and explore the local area – often a city.
I became interested in Land Art and forms in the natural environment and spent many years and most weekends visiting different landscapes and sites from stone circles such as Castlerigg in Cumbria to the weird and wonderful rock formations of Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire.
You could regularly find me trailing round sculpture parks like those at Grizedale Forest in Cumbria and The Yorkshire Sculpture Park. In fact you can pretty much rely on me to stumble across something sculpture related no matter where I go! More recently I’ve become addicted to sculpture trails and I travel all around the UK following many of them in a year.
After excelling at Art and Design in school, I completed an Art Foundation Course, then went on to study Contemporary Crafts at university. Through these I developed a love of architecture, culture and heritage; visiting castles, stately homes, historic sites and cathedrals and taking out memberships with the National Trust, English Heritage and the Historic Houses Association.
My love of Art took me to cities the world over to visit galleries and museums, from L’Accademia in Venice to the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Kelvingrove in Glasgow and the Guggenheim in both New York and Bilbao. This fuelled my love of a good city break, immersing myself in the culture and heritage of the place, eating the local food and meeting the local people. And we certainly have a wealth of different cultures in Europe – I never get bored!
Why I love Great Britain so Much
I could never understand it when I heard my peers saying they were bored during holidays and at weekends when there are so many exciting things to do, see and experience in the world. And despite their grumblings to the contrary, such things didn’t have to cost a fortune, or require travel to all corners of the globe. Great Britain: the world in miniature is on our doorstep and is so accessible to all.
And what is Great Britain particularly rich in? The Great Outdoors!
I love being outdoors: country walking and particularly fell walking with my Dad. As a family, we love the English Lake District and trekking to waterfalls countrywide.
I walk for the views, the landscapes, the cloudscapes, the cityscapes, the seascapes and the colour: the vibrant yellow of gorse rich landscapes in spring, summery oil seed rape fields, the reds and golds of autumnal woods and a breathtakingly warm sunset. All have their own unique charm and I love capturing it all on camera.
I even love the English weather! Wow – now that’s a controversial statement…! After all – it is our unpredictable weather that gives us such moody cloudscapes, not to mention waterfalls in spate.
So – Why a Blog?
As writing is also a passion of mine – writing stories as a child, postcards to practically everyone I knew when on holidays, monthly letters to my grandparents, a hopelessly devoted pen-pal to many, a (weird) love of writing essays at school and uni, commercial script-writing for many years; and now creatively writing short stories, I’m amazed I didn’t start blogging sooner.
I enjoy bringing my experiences to life via the written word, complimented with outstanding photography. I have recently invested in a Nikon D750 camera as well as a Pixel 3 (which I love for taking photos) If I can spread just a fraction of the joy I feel in doing all this to you, I’ll be a happy bunny!
Some of my Favourite and Most Read Posts
I started Travel Junkie Girl in June 2016 – I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for 4 years. I have had a few breaks along the way due to health issues but am still going strong.
Here are some of my most popular posts:
The Knife Angel – a contemporary sculpture and monumental memorial that is touring the UK – see if it’s coming to a town or city near you…
Penshaw Monument – the Greek Temple of North East England
Walking amongst the Iron Men at Crosby Beach in Merseyside
Exploring Brimham Rocks in the Snow
Discovering Hamburg in Autumn
Other Travel Writing Contributions
I have contributed travel pieces to various other websites and have seen my work in print in Nottingham’s ‘IN Nottingham’ Magazine, contributing regularly through 2018/19.
Most recently I contributed to website Your Parking Space (an excellent source for finding and booking parking in the UK) who regularly feature write up’s on the Top UK Attractions and Destinations to Visit. You’ll find my favourite Yorkshire location of Brimham Rocks amongst many other fabulous UK destinations.
I am particularly proud of a piece I put together for European Interrailing Package Company: Euroventure on A Culture Seeker’s Guide to Brussels – Brussels is a city that for some reason just makes me want to return to again and again, which I have… but I still want to go back, just once more I promise!
A Travel Junkie Girl!
I guess through my site I aim to be a travel guide…
I’d love to be considered a travel guru one day….
But right now I’m most definitely…
A Travel Junkie Girl!
If you would like to receive email updates when my blogs go live, you can sign up in the side bar to the right, or if you’re on your phone, just scroll a little further down and it’s right there below my piccie!
If you’d like to discuss a collaboration or just stop by to say hi, you can contact me here or drop me an email at tilly@traveljunkiegirl.com
And of course – you can find me on all your favourite social media platforms – on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I don’t know about you but Twitter is my fave!
Thank you for reading…
love Tilly Jaye x
