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The beaches are family-friendly, with water sports available for older kids (and adults!) and shallow water stretching far out to allow easy water play for smaller ones. It’s beautiful beaches and white-washed towns provide plenty to do for families, and there are lots of villas that provide family-friendly accommodation. Despite this, it has the deepest caves in the entire Cyclades and tons of beautiful beaches and smaller islets which make it perfect for a fun-filled holiday for families be it lounging on a beach, gorging on fresh Greek food or getting a bit of adrenaline rush exploring the caves. The best place to stay in Andros for families is Agios Petros Beach, as the area is dotted with self-catered apartments built along one of the island’s dreamiest sandy beaches.

Discovering new foods is one of my favourite things about travelling, but I’d never considered writing solely about food, and although I love trying new recipes and experimenting in the kitchen, a food blog wasn’t exactly on my radar. I had entertained the idea of creating a new blog in this niche for a long time, but the thought of starting over again from scratch was always quite daunting. It’s a part of our content plan for future blog posts and YouTube videos along with travel content when the world reopens. Once COVID began and travel wasn’t an option, I began shifting the content on my blog, Wellness Travel Diaries, to focus more on wellness resources, outdoor hiking adventures, self-care regiments, and fitness — all while sprinkling in some travel for the wanderlust readers.

It’d been just over a year since I’d gone self-employed, sort of by accident, but I had managed to scrape together an income through a freelance writing job, income from the blog and campaigns, and a couple of temp jobs. Despite enjoying his agency job, Phil knew it would be hard to maintain that, plus time spent as a family and working on starting a business too. These are questions and doubts I still grapple with, but at the same time I know we couldn’t have made a different decision based on what we knew in December 2019 and January 2020, and in any case, we wouldn’t be where we are now if we didn’t. By September we were going from strength to strength as our traffic and income continued to improve and also picking up some local travel work for Migrating Miss too, which was exciting!

Despite all of this, there are some Christmas traditions that can be traced back many years in Scotland, and a few that were passed on to become New Year (or Hogmanay, as it’s called here) traditions instead. When all of this was banned Scots couldn’t be without a party, of course, so they moved celebrations to a week later to the New Year, and Hogmanay became the biggest celebration of the year. The log would be lit using a piece of the previous year’s log, and it was said that those sitting around the burning fire would have good luck and prosperity for the year ahead. The first footer is the first person to cross the threshold on the day (now New Year’s Day) and would carry money, bread or black bun, and coal or peat said to bring wealth, lack of want, and warmth to the household.