Hi, we’re Zoe and Paul, welcome to HolidayPackList.
We’re a married couple living in Torquay on the English Riviera with our wonderfully grumpy cat, Pickle, who takes absolutely no interest in travel whatsoever – unless it is her travels, that take her to gardens beyond ours!
These days our children have all grown up, which means we’ve reached a stage of life that feels rather special. We’re still busy with work, family and grandchildren, but we’ve also found ourselves with more freedom to travel together than ever before. And if we’re being completely honest, we probably enjoy planning holidays almost as much as taking them.
….Almost.
Let’s get that bit out of the way first, we’re not travel agents nor are we destination experts. We’re not influencers and we’re certainly not pretending to be a team of travel professionals sitting in a shiny office somewhere. We’re simply experienced travellers who have spent years making mistakes, learning lessons and discovering things we wish we’d known before we left home.
Some of those discoveries have been big, others have been surprisingly small – like the importance of towel pegs on a windy beach; or why beach towels with pockets might be one of humanity’s greatest inventions; or why you’ll never convince us that a waterproof phone pouch isn’t one of the smartest things you can pack.
Travel has taught us that the small things often make the biggest difference.
Like many good ideas, HolidayPackList started with a problem; actually, several problems. Over the years we’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve arrived somewhere and immediately thought:
“I wish somebody had told me that before I came.” Or “How on earth did I forget to pack that?”
Sometimes we’d spot another traveller using something ingenious and spend the rest of the holiday wondering why we’d never thought of it ourselves! Other times we’d discover a destination tip buried halfway through a holiday that would have been incredibly useful on day one, and sometimes we’d realise that the information online simply wasn’t answering the questions we actually wanted answered.
Not:
What’s the capital city? Or: How many people live there?
But:
Is it actually worth visiting?
What surprised you?
What would you do differently next time?
What do people forget to pack?
What made the holiday easier?
They’re the sorts of questions we find ourselves asking before every trip and they’re the sorts of questions HolidayPackList was built to answer.
One thing you’ll quickly discover about us is that we have a habit of turning holidays into challenges. For example, The Great Greek Taverna Challenge started with a simple question: “Which restaurant should we try tonight?”
It somehow evolved into a full-blown competition complete with scoring systems and repeat visits.
Our real packing challenge started after meeting a couple on holiday who had managed to fit everything they needed for a two-week trip into hand luggage, including snorkelling gear. Naturally, instead of admiring them and moving on with our lives, we turned it into a mission. Years later, we’re still refining our packing lists and trying to answer the same question:
“How little can we take and still have everything we need?”
HolidayPackList grew out of that same curiosity.
We briefly considered creating a much more corporate website; something that looked polished and professional. Something that looked like a travel company.
Then we asked ourselves a simple question. If we were planning a holiday, would we want advice from a faceless website or from real people?
The answer was obvious.
Whenever we read travel content, we want to know who is behind it. What sort of traveller are they? Do they travel like us? Do they enjoy the same things we enjoy? Can we trust their judgement?
So rather than hide behind a brand, we decided to be ourselves.
What you read on HolidayPackList comes from our own experiences, our own observations, our own mistakes, our own successes and occasionally our own slightly ridiculous holiday traditions.
HolidayPackList sits somewhere between a travel blog, a destination guide and a packing resource.
You’ll find:
Some articles are destination guides, others are what we call Field Notes, reflections on something we learned, discovered or started thinking about whilst travelling.
The common thread running through all of them is that they’re real.
Although packing is where the idea started, HolidayPackList is becoming something much bigger.
We’re currently building a free tool that will help travellers create personalised packing lists based on where they’re going, who they’re travelling with and the type of holiday they’re taking. The goal isn’t to help people pack more, it’s to help them pack better, to avoid forgetting the important things, to stop filling suitcases with things they’ll never use and to learn from the mistakes we’ve already made.
There are some exciting plans for the future too, but we’re keeping those under wraps for now.
After all, every good holiday needs a little mystery.
We want to be completely transparent about this. Some pages on HolidayPackList may contain affiliate links. If you choose to buy something through one of those links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.
The important bit is this: We will never recommend a product simply because it earns a commission. If we recommend something, it’s because:
HolidayPackList exists to help travellers, not to sell things they don’t need.
Trust matters far more to us than commissions ever will.
Over the years we’ve come to realise that the best travel memories rarely come from the attractions themselves. They come from conversations., traditions, discoveries, wrong turns or unexpected moments.
The sort of experiences that become family stories long after the holiday is over.
Some of ours started with a ferry crossing to a Greek island, others started with a packing challenge and a few began completely by accident.
We’re looking forward to sharing them with you.
We’re genuinely delighted you’ve found us. Whether you’re planning a weekend away, a family holiday, an adventure with friends or the trip of a lifetime, we hope you’ll find something useful here.
So grab a coffee, have a browse and join us for the journey.
We have a feeling it’s going to be fun.
Zoe, Paul (& Pickle 🐾)