A Biscuit Cruise Adventure!

Photo courtesy of Mollie Makes & Piers MacDonald c/o Blogtacular

Back in June this year whilst visiting London for my favourite creative blogging conference, Blogtacular, I pitched an idea for a holiday to the good folks at Thomson. Nicky and Christian (pictured above) had arranged a section of the Royal Institute to look just like an airplane to set the scene- and throughout the day they were on the look out for bloggers to become their roving reporters for trips all over the world. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pitch my plan and give it a go!

I’m a visual person, so after doodling some notes & tips from Christian & Kat’s Pitch Perfect webinar, I set about making some props to illustrate my travel idea. Naturally, my ideal holiday had to have tea & biscuits as a central theme! I’m one of those people who has at least 8 cups of tea a day, so when I’m abroad I do tend to struggle a bit without my regular cuppa breaks. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s taken a full box of teabags on holiday with them and then attempted to make a very bad cuppa with warm UHT milk in the corner of a hotel room). On this trip I wanted to do things a little differently!

So I proposed a Biscuit Cruise!

I designed & hand painted a “passport” that showed my itinerary for the journey. The plan- was to visit as many different regions as possible, searching for the best local tea and biscuit alternatives.  No DIY cuppas allowed! One way to see lots of places within the a single trip was a Cruise- a way that I’ve never travelled before.

I got my pencils out again and doodled a map showing our potential itinerary, along with designing some travel stamps to pay tribute to the local delicacies we hoped to seek out.

The time guideline for the pitch was only a few minutes- and when I presented mine- it felt like it was over in a flash.

Very occasionally, I get an email that will make me jump out of my seat and do a “WOOHOO!” and the one from Thomson saying that the Biscuit Cruise was GO was one of them! Everything’s come together quite quickly since then and we leave this Friday to embark on our very Biscuity Adventure!

Here’s our itinerary for the week:

Day: 1 Palma – MAJORCA
Day: 2 At Sea
Day: 3 Olbia – SARDINIA
Day: 4 Sorrento* – ITALY
Day: 5 Civitavecchia (for Rome) – ITALY
Day: 6 Ajaccio – CORSICA
Day: 7 Palamos – SPAIN
Day: 8 Palma – MAJORCA

If you have any advice on what we should try while we’re in each place- leave me a comment and we’ll add it to our list 🙂

So many of you commented on the DIY cardboard “passport” that I designed for my pitch, I thought it was only fitting to make some lovely real leather ones for us to take with us. They’re in our online store now– if you’d like one too!

The rest of this week will see us being super excited whilst preparing for our trip. While we’re away you’ll be able to follow our journey on social media via Instagram, Twitter & our blog too. I can’t wait to share it with you all!

Love & Biscuits,

Nikki xx