Hi! I’m Jude, Mum and wife of the mini travel tribe. We’re a family of five living in Yorkshire in Northern England. The rest of the tribe consists of Adam (Dad), Chloe (aged 13), Martha (aged 10) and Benjamin (aged 9). As well as creating this travel blog I love running (I’ve managed to combine this with travel too!) and I work part time as a Speech and Language Therapist in the NHS.
My love of travel was instilled by my Mum when I was a child. Having been an original ten pound pom herself and travelling all around Australia and Asia in the 70s, she did come back to Yorkshire to marry my Dad. ‘Make sure you travel the world before you settle down’, is what I remember her saying to me frequently during my teenage years. I think she may have lived to regret that sentiment when during my early twenties I embarked on frequent solo travelling trips for months at a time (over a year on one occasion). I became somewhat travel obsessed and returned home to make more money to fund the next trip! During that time I managed to experience large parts of Africa, Australia, New Zealand and South America.
When settled back in the UK for a while in London I met Adam, my (then) future husband who also shared my love of travel. This meant we were all set to embark on further travelling adventures together covering India, South East Asia and the Trans-Siberian railway to name a few.
Since having a family of our own we have done our best to instil that same love for travel within our children. So far it seems to be working as they (mostly) love exploring new places as much as we do. Travelling as a family is very different to travelling solo or in a couple. Often our pace of travel needs to be a bit slower and there are more frequent playground stops than there used to be, but I love seeing the places we visit through the eyes of our children. We have travelled Europe extensively as a family getting away for either shorter city breaks or longer holidays as much as we possibly can.
So far I have managed to visit over 60 countries and Chloe is creeping towards 20.
What are our favourite destinations?
My favourite family travel holiday so far was probably Slovenia. I just loved the stunning scenery and swimming in a different pristine lake or river everyday.
Martha surprised me by listing Belgium as her favourite destination. I think mostly because of the moules, frites and chocolate!
Adam’s favourite country that we have been to as a family so far is Albania. When I first suggested it as a holiday destination he was unsure but he was totally won over when we went.
So, why start a travel blog?
As a travel lover I (mostly) enjoy the research part of our trip nearly as much as being at the destination! Travel research has changed over the years and where I would have never dreamed of travelling without my trusty lonely planet I now find myself spending more time on travel blogs reading people’s lived experiences of places, and especially grateful for any hints and tips on ways to make travel with kids easier. I then found myself wanting to share our own travel experiences to help other families also planning to travel to those destinations. And so mini travel tribe was born!
The mini travel tribe mission
Our mission is to expose our children to as many experiences as we can in the short time we have before they won’t want to travel with us anymore. This includes cultural experiences, trying different cuisines as well as plenty of outdoor experiences. So far some of our experiences have included white water rafting in Slovenia, seeing a live volcano eruption in Sicily and feasting on local seafood in Portugal.