Episode one (Season One): Welcome to Twin Perspectives

When we decided to launch Twins That Travel – one stunningly dull lunchtime in mid 2014 – we didn’t have much of a plan. In fact, ‘launch’ is an ambitious word for the reality of what happened: the creation of an Instagram account over a plate of chips. We failed to discuss objectives, any real plan of action or an end goal. Claire just wanted relief from the boredom of working in a silent library, whilst I wanted something (anything) to focus on, aside from a crumbling home life. Perhaps most painfully – for our Dad, at least – we also failed to check that our name was grammatically correct; a mistake that may indeed keep him up at night, for the rest of his life.

Yet, we did have one small aim: we wanted our blog (or at this point, a content poor Instagram account) to be at the very least relatable – covering travel at its best and indeed, its worst. We hoped to create a community of friends and offer a small corner of the internet where we could share stories, chat honestly about our experiences and offer support, advice and help. A version of the AA for travellers, I guess.

In three years, this goal of ours – to make friends, to offer a relatable form of travel and to create a country-crossing network of support – has been realised (we hope). We’ve loved blogging, just as much as we’ve loved sharing our adventures with our brilliant Instagram community.

However, it’s not always easy to convey a friendly voice or a sympathetic ear via a WordPress site. This is especially so when, like me, you become embroiled in creating not just a blog post, but a thesis. Somewhere between my own experiences and my penchant for semi-colons, I worry this desired sense of ‘closeness’ gets lost.

So, to combat this – to lift our blog from a word document and into your ears – we have decided to launch a podcast series. Terrifying.

Our hope is that the series will represent our blog ‘in conversation’ – a way to chat more openly about our experiences, without the need to worry about an Oxford comma. The series will cover predominantly our experiences of the destinations we visit, but will also deal with those personal issues that we have tried to tackle on our blog: living with anxiety and depression, and life as identical twins (not that the two are linked…)

As enormous fans of podcasts, we’re excited to try this new media and to hear your thoughts. You never know, this series could be the ideal tool to get you to sleep on those pesky long haul flights.

So, without further ado, below is the link to our first podcast episode. A little like the warm-up act before a brilliantly witty comedian that you’ve paid big bucks to see, this episode is perhaps not as brilliantly slick as we’d like, but we hope with more practice, we’ll only improve. This first episode is an introduction: an introduction to who we are and our (at times tediously dull) journey over the last three years. It’s also a journey that has led us away from full-time jobs and into full-time travel blogging; a journey we chart throughout our conversation. Included are our tips regarding what we think may have helped us grow our blog, our future hopes for Twins That Travel, and why we dressed up like school children to attend our first blogger event.

We really hope you enjoy Twin Perspectives and if not, we hope it at least provides you with some comforting white noise to accompany your day. We’d be thrilled if you could let us know your thoughts, below and please so subscribe.

Thank you, as ever.

Listen in iTunes

References or notable mentions:

Instagram accounts:

Dame Traveler

Travel and Leisure

Beautiful Destinations

Travel bloggers:

Heroine in Heels

The Travel Hack

World of Wanderlust

Inspiring people:

Proper Post (Rebecca Bradley)