Hello! I’m Victoria, a qualified pharmacy technician, who gave up the day job in October to travel the world with my partner in crime, (and husband) Darren. When we’re not travelling, we’re indulging in our second love of renovating houses. Our 6th, and biggest project is about to begin – a town house in Spain! This website is my corner of the internet to indulge in my love of rambling on….
If you have followed my written works previously, you’ll know that I jotted down a lot of stories from 10 years of travel adventures with Darren on my blog littledonkeytravels.com. I then started, just as our 6th renovation project began, to write our home renovation tales on metcalfemakeovers.com.
But, it all got a bit much. Just before giving up work to travel the world, I tried to update my travel blog to a new (prettier) slicker platform. Moving my travel blog to a new platform jumbled up all my photos and made all the inbuilt links in my posts stop working. The platform I used couldn’t keep up with the long posts and photo quantities that I wanted to upload, and failed in one way or another on an almost daily basis. Instead of writing as frequently as I did, I found myself frantically trying to fix the problems the platform moved had caused, which seemed to get more and more difficult as time went by. In the end, it took away the enjoyment, satisfaction (and therapy – yes, writing is a pretty good medicine) eighteen months worth of writing had given me, and when working on my blog in a country with the slowest ,OK maybe one of the slowest, internet connections in the world (I’m looking at you Malaysia) meant that I couldn’t even upload a photo, I almost gave up writing blogs altogether.
Yet, I have so much on my mind that I want to write about, and I flipping enjoy doing it. So I decided at the end of our stay in Malaysia this month (March 2016) that I want just one space on the internet in which I can write exactly what I want, when I want. I don’t care much for google rankings, and I no longer care for a fancy website with all things wizardry, but I do want it to look pretty – I’m thinking pastels and florals here, and if only my mum follows me (because mums always believe in you, right?) then I wont mind, I’m still going to ramble on. Because one day, I want to be able to make a copy my written words, much like the first blog I ever wrote, right back in 2006, which was published into a limited edition (cough: one copy) book, which is now one of my most treasured possessions.
The Metcalfe Memoir has been born
If I try to categorise it and find my ‘key words’ just like google wants (grunt) I’ll tick the travel and lifestyle blog box, but really, The Metcalfe Memoir is a free-for-all of my thoughts and, whilst most of the posts I write will comfortably tick the travel box, or the lifestyle box, some will spill in to both, and the others wont fit in to a tick box at all….
Victoria x
ps – If you want to follow along, please pop your email in the subscription box on the left. There’s lots more to come including a round up of our 9 week drive through 12 countries in Europe, and some pictures of our new home….
Thanks for the follow. Your blog looks really interesting. Have you ever been to Greece? Your road trip sounded amazing. I sympathise with you about blog prob,end, it’s so frustrating at times, making a blog look just right, I al last give up, but nice comments keep me going. And I admire you for doing house renovations. If I could ever turn back the clock, I wish I had got into this many years ago. Must rush – Homes the Hammer is just starting!
Thanks Georgie. I’ve been to Kos with my family when I was younger – I’ld love to return and travel further in Greece, its such a beautiful part of the world. Talking about parts of the world, are you from the South Coast originally? I’m from Southampton…..