Wild and Free Journeys

09/29/2026

I was recently featured on a podcast episode hosted by taylor owner of and

I was away when it came out, but I wanted to share it now I’m back.

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Podcast Episode · The Network Build Grow Podcast: Relationships that Scale · August 25 · 22m

09/28/2026

Why won’t my db account let me share to my business page? So I’m sharing my Dades Gorge post for anyone who doesn’t follow my personal page.

Dades Gorge - Morocco

Dadès Gorge has a stunning rock formation called Monkey's Fingers, and we were lucky enough to be staying directly opposite it.

So naturally, I wanted to get closer.

I'd walked with Hussein last year and knew he was exactly the person to take us down into the valley. My vision was fairly gentle — wander beneath the palms, follow the water, cross the little bridges and explore around the bottom of Monkey's Fingers.

Unfortunately, the river had other ideas.

Heavy rains last year had taken out several of the bridges, making our planned route impossible. Hussein knew another way, although he did mention there would be "a little climbing."

Then he looked at my sandals.

I assured him they would be fine.

I was picturing the occasional rock. I was wrong.

For the first part, I appeared to be right. The valley is beautiful — cool and green beneath the palms, with water running through it and crops growing everywhere. Maize, tomatoes, olives, almonds, dates. We passed locals going about their day, heard goats we couldn't actually see and wandered through this incredibly peaceful little world tucked beneath those huge walls of rock.

Then Hussein started going up.

Not slightly up.

Up.

There were rocks to haul myself over, enormous steps between footholds, sections on hands and knees and one particular moment when I had my back pressed firmly against a rock with a rather large drop beside me and decided that staying exactly where I was seemed an excellent plan.

Hussein, thankfully, was endlessly patient.

Somehow, sandals and all, I made it over the top and down the other side.

And that's where we met two local women preparing to carry enormous bundles of hay back to their village. They asked Hussein where we'd come from and he pointed back over the rocks.

They looked up at the route.

They looked at me.

They looked at my sandals.

"She did that?"

Hussein said yes.

They burst out laughing.

Frankly, so did I.

Especially as my perfectly good trainers were sitting in our lovely air-conditioned van, about half an hour away.

09/17/2026

The Sahara Desert.

It’s a long journey in, but I loved it. We passed through small villages where everyday life was happening all around us. Donkeys laden down with enormous loads. Women carrying huge bundles of grasses on their backs.

Just ordinary life.

And I find it fascinating. These small into how people actually live are often as interesting to me as the places we’ve travelled all that way to see.

As we got closer to the desert, though, we realised our chances of a sunset ride into the desert on top of a camel 🐪 were becoming slim!

We were not far from our meeting point when the Sahara changed our plans.

Thunder.

Clouds.

Did I mention wind!

And then rain.

Proper, pouring rain. In the Sahara.

Apparently they get only a handful of rainy days a year. Well, lucky us. We’d found one. 😂

So there was no sunset camel ride. No sitting on top of a dune watching the sky turn orange. None of the photographs we thought we’d be taking.

And actually, it was absolutely fine.

We arrived at our desert camp, settled into our home for the night and watched the rain instead. And there was something rather wonderful about seeing the Sahara doing something you so rarely get to see.

We chatted with the guys at the camp, cooled down, showered, drank lots of water and had a fabulous dinner. We met our fellow guests, including two Italians, which resulted in some wonderfully broken conversations, and finished the evening listening to Gnawa music. We even had drumming lessons.

It was quiet. Relaxed. And really rather lovely.

Not remotely the evening we’d planned.

But that’s travel.

You can spend months planning a journey, choosing the places, the experiences and all the little details, but you can never completely control what happens once you get there.

And I don’t think I’d want to.

Sometimes the weather changes. Sometimes someone isn’t feeling great. Sometimes the sunset simply doesn’t happen.

So you change the plan.

And every now and then, you get to sit in the Sahara and watch it rain.

I think I’ll remember that.

Slow Down. See Differently. Stay Curious.™

09/14/2026

Morocco - day 7 - Fes

Fes is a city of contrasts.

Our hotel sits peacefully up on the hill, looking down over the city, but this morning we headed into the medina — and peaceful it most definitely is not! We
Walked into what can only be described as a wonderful maze of organised chaos.

The old medina is enormous. Around 16km of ancient walls still snake around much of it, punctuated by 14 historic gates, although today there are places where the walls have disappeared altogether.

And once you’re inside, it’s another world.

Narrow alleyways twist in every direction, some so small you can almost touch both sides. Others suddenly open up into busy souks filled with spices, leather, ceramics, food, donkeys, carts and people.

And then there are the hundreds of dead ends — which makes me very glad we had a guide, because my sense of direction would have had us wandering around until Thursday.

One of the most fascinating stops was the famous Chouara Tannery. Leather has been dyed here using traditional methods for centuries, and from the terraces above you look down onto this extraordinary patchwork of stone vats filled with dyes and hides.

And yes, it smells. 😂

But actually, nowhere near as badly as I remembered! And it remains one of those places that, however many photographs you’ve seen, is completely different when you’re standing there watching people doing work that has been carried out in much the same way for generations.

Fes is noisy, complicated, colourful, occasionally overwhelming and completely fascinating.

And after several hours in its maze of alleyways, that quiet hotel on the hill was looking rather wonderful.

# wildandfreejourneys

09/12/2026

Morning from Morocco!

One of the things I'm constantly doing when I travel is looking.

Looking for the places I want to bring people back to, the experiences that will make a Wild & Free journey feel different, and those little details that can turn a good trip into something really special.

And Morocco has already given me plenty to think about.

We started in Casablanca with the Hassan II Mosque, sitting right out over the Atlantic. Standing inside, you feel the sheer size of the place — a strange mix of belonging and smallness, like you're a tiny part of something far grander than yourself.

Then came Rabat, a city I think far too many people simply pass through. It's clean, unhurried and refreshingly free of the tourist crush — yet there's plenty here if you look. The Hassan Tower is incredible, but I also loved the ceremonial guards outside on their beautifully groomed horses, adding another layer to the whole experience.

And now Chefchaouen.

Tourists come here, but the town doesn't perform for them. It's calm, beautiful and easy to wander. This morning we headed out early, before the stallholders had set up, and for a while we had those famous blue streets almost to ourselves.

Walking the streets early feels different. It's peaceful at this time. Locals are waking slowly, unhurried, and for once there's no one selling to me — just time to think, and to wander.

That's the Morocco I'm looking for.

Not simply the places everyone says you should see, but how and when we experience them. Finding the quieter moments, knowing when to arrive, when to linger and sometimes when to change the plan completely.

09/10/2026

Six days in Sicily, and I think some of my favourite moments were the ones I could never have planned.

Of course, there were the big sights. Etna, Taormina, the Valley of the Temples, Ortigia. Beautiful places that absolutely deserve their place on an itinerary.

But then there was Rosa.

I’d booked a cooking class with her, and when I told her my business was called Wild & Free Journeys, her face lit up.

“I’m wild and free! Where are we going?”

It turns out she’s not only a fabulous Sicilian cook, she’s also a guide who does some wonderfully crazy things. A cooking class suddenly became a connection and, quite possibly, the beginning of something for a future journey.

Then there was Noto. After dinner with our driver and guide and his wife, they said, “You must see Noto.” It was 10.30pm. We were tired. But we went.

And we loved every minute. The magnificent Baroque buildings lit up at night, the streets still alive, and a musician playing outside one of those extraordinary churches. We stopped and listened for more than half an hour. None of it planned.

Agira happened because we decided we didn’t particularly want to do the touristy option that had been suggested. Instead, we headed up into this mountain town — some fairly crazy driving involved — and discovered enormous views, a wonderful lunch looking across towards Etna and somewhere one of my guests now wants to return to with her husband.

There was an impromptu stop in a little seaside town with barely a tourist in sight, simply because Italian gelato seemed like an excellent idea.

And there were the quiet bits too. Long lunches. Local restaurants. People-watching. Afternoons beside beautiful hotel pools because Sicily was hot and sometimes the best decision was to stop for a few hours and do absolutely nothing.

Those pools, incidentally, may now be an essential part of a Wild & Free itinerary!

Perhaps that’s what I’ll remember most about these six days.

You can plan the route. You can choose beautiful places to stay and wonderful things to see. But you also need to leave enough space for a journey to surprise you.

Because very often, that’s where the best bits are.

Thank you Siciliantouring for awesome company and ideas.

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09/09/2026

😂 I finally got to visit the Hassan II Mosque yesterday. What an amazing structure! The sheer size is something quite extraordinary. These facts interested me the most…

* Hassan II Mosque was only completed in 1993. It looks centuries old in places, but it’s remarkably modern.

* It was deliberately built partly over the Atlantic, inspired by the Qur’anic image of God’s throne being upon the water. That relationship between the building and the ocean is fundamental to its design.

* The minaret rises to about 200 metres, and at night a laser points towards Mecca for roughly 30 km.

* Inside, there’s a massive retractable roof — 3,400 m² and around 1,100 tonnes — so the prayer hall can actually open to the sky. This is incredibly impressive to see!

* The prayer hall holds 25,000 people, with eighty thousand more able to gather outside.

* Thousands of Moroccan craftspeople worked on it, on the zellige tiles, carved cedar, painted plaster, marble and metalwork. It’s all so Intricate

* It only took about seven years to build, beginning in 1986 and opening in August 1993.

These are just a few images which hopefully show the scale.

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09/05/2026

First thing I discovered? The Valley of the Temples isn’t actually in a valley…

Despite the name Valley of the Temples, the temples aren’t actually in a valley. They’re largely positioned along a ridge below ancient Agrigento.

We visited yesterday evening, in time for the sun setting and what struck me most was this…

2,500 years puts a busy week into perspective.

There’s something rather wonderful about walking through a landscape where people were building temples, growing olives, trading, arguing, falling in love and getting on with everyday life two and a half thousand years ago.

And we’re still walking the same ground.

Certainly something to mull over over dinner.

09/04/2026

There’s something quite surreal about walking on the side of an active volcano.

Mount Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and standing there, surrounded by black volcanic ash and great stretches of lava, it’s impossible not to think about the forces that have created this landscape.

And yet, what struck me most was the calm. Not what I expected, a few weeks after an eruption.

I think I’d expected Etna to feel dramatic and slightly threatening. Instead, there was this strange serenity to it. A vast, almost lunar landscape, the wind whipping around us at the top, and nothing underfoot but black rock stretching further than I could see.

Walking on volcanic ash is an experience in itself. Two steps forward, half a step back, and absolutely filthy shoes by the end of it. 😂 And I have to say, I felt rather pleased with myself for all the climbing I managed too.

Etna rises to around 3,400 metres, although its height actually changes as eruptions reshape the summit. I love that. Even the mountain itself isn’t fixed.

We tend to look at a volcano and think about eruptions, fire and destruction. But standing there yesterday, I saw something different, and it’s stayed with me since.

Stillness. Beauty. A landscape constantly being destroyed, remade and changed.

Sometimes seeing differently is simply about standing still long enough to notice what you weren’t expecting to find.

Slow Down. See Differently. Stay Curious.™

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09/03/2026

Mt Etna.

Our hotel overlooks Mt Etna and today it looks beautiful.

There is a calmness surrounding us this morning. Before the workers start making noise, before most people are up.

My early wander revealed a beautiful reflection in the pool, now disturbed by the morning swimmers.

My tummy tells me it’s breakfast time, but somehow I don’t want to leave the stillness I’m enveloped in right now.

Camera in hand, totally my happy place, I wander looking for light falling, the sounds of the Italian workers talking fast.

I wonder how long it will last before more of us gather, following the smell of the coffee, our call to breakfast.

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