In September 2021, I made a slightly unusual decision. I went to Valencia on my own for a month. It was an experiment. I’d never travelled solo for that length of time before and I had no idea whether I’d enjoy it. As it turned out, I loved it.
I returned to London and almost immediately put my flat up for sale. When the sale went through in April 2022, I had a plan. I was going to travel, starting with one of the items on my bucket list: seeing the tulips in the Netherlands.
That one-month trip to Valencia had changed something for me. What started as an experiment became a completely different way of living. Since then, I’ve travelled through Europe, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand and eventually found myself in Bali, where I fell in love with the island and made it my home.
I’ve now travelled to more than 45 countries on my own. There have been plenty of highlights along the way, including winter in Iceland, my first trip to Rome, celebrating Holi in India, visiting the Taj Mahal and exploring the temples of Japan.
One Big Thing Each Year
Since I started travelling solo, I’ve tried to have something big to look forward to each year. It doesn’t have to be a particular type of challenge. I just like having something on the horizon that I’m excited about. In 2024, that was climbing Kilimanjaro.
I joined an all-women team and spent seven days making our way up the mountain. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, particularly when altitude sickness hit me, but reaching the summit on International Women’s Day was an incredible experience.
By then, I was already thinking about what I could do next. I had visited every continent except one. Antarctica.
The Journey to Antarctica
In February 2025, I finally made it. I travelled with Intrepid Travel, setting off from Argentina on an expedition boat with around 180 other passengers. Getting to Antarctica is an adventure in itself because you have to cross the Drake Passage.
There are two ways people describe the crossing: the “Drake Lake” when the sea is calm, and the “Drake Shake” when it isn’t. There’s no telling which one you’re going to get. Unfortunately, we got the Drake Shake.
The first day was not my finest hour. I was seasick and spent most of it in my cabin, wondering whether the next two days were going to be more of the same. Thankfully, things settled down and I was able to enjoy the rest of the crossing.
It took around two and a half days to reach Antarctica. We arrived overnight, so I didn’t actually see it happen. Instead, I woke up, opened the curtains in our cabin and realised we had arrived. It was incredible. Everything was so white and so quiet. After days at sea, suddenly seeing Antarctica outside the window felt quite surreal.
Exploring Antarctica by Zodiac
The best way to explore was by Zodiac. We went out twice a day on expeditions, although you never quite knew what each trip was going to bring. Sometimes we travelled across the water looking for whales, seals and sea lions. Other times we landed on shore and visited penguin colonies. The wildlife was one of the highlights of the whole trip.
Seeing whales in the water was incredible, but the penguins were impossible not to love. Watching them going about their business, completely unconcerned by the group of humans standing nearby, was one of those moments where you just stop and take it all in.
And then there was the landscape. The scale of it was difficult to comprehend. Huge stretches of white, mountains, ice and water, with very little noise apart from the wildlife and the movement of the sea. It felt completely different from anywhere I’d been before.
The People I Met
One of the things I hadn’t really considered before the trip was who I would be travelling with. I shared a cabin with a fantastic woman who was also travelling on her own. We got on so well that we’ve stayed friends since the trip. She was also ticking Antarctica off as her final continent, so we had that in common from the start.
The age range on the boat was surprisingly broad. The youngest passenger was 28 and the oldest was 75, and around 75% of the passengers were women. I loved that. There was something really enjoyable about being surrounded by people who were all curious enough to travel somewhere so remote, but who had arrived there in completely different ways.
My Final Continent
Reaching Antarctica means I have now visited every continent. I definitely a sense of achievement from that, but also a realisation that I don’t think I’m finished travelling just because I’ve ticked off all seven continents. If anything, the opposite. I still have plenty of places I want to see and plenty of things I want to do. Kilimanjaro taught me that I’m capable of more than I sometimes think. Antarctica reminded me why I started travelling in the first place: curiosity, adventure and the excitement of seeing somewhere completely new.
And that one-month experiment in Valencia? It turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
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Travel is a big part of my life, but so is supporting women to develop their confidence and public speaking skills. If you’d like to find out more about what I do, take a look at my coaching and workshops.
