For those that haven’t been following along, click here for an overview! Everyone else, feel free to continue on to my first Euro Trip update.

Euro Trip: Update #1: A week in Devon, England

Last Thursday, I arrived at Heathrow airport in London. As I’ve already been to London a few times, we opted to head straight to Hayley’s hometown. Hayley lives in Torquay, a cute little seaside town situated on the western coast in Devon, England. Hayley still has a few weeks left in her flat, so I came to help her move out and sell off her remaining stuff before we head out on our trip. This also gives us a few weeks to finalize the final details of our Euro trip. Speaking of selling stuff, Hayley has A LOT of clothes to sell! As a side business (that often pays more than her 9-5 job), Hayley sells clothing online.

Earning my keep!

To help Hayley with the move, I’ve been taking photographs of her clothes. As most of you know, I’m mainly a landscape and cityscape photographer, so these types of pictures are new to me. She mentioned that clothes with nice photos often get featured and can be sold for a higher price. So, it was time for me to start practicing my portrait photography. We started taking some around her flat, which is situated on a hill overlooking the entire city. The balcony provides excellent views of the sea and the city below! She has decided to open her business to international shipping (previously being England only).

As her entire inventory is secondhand from a wide variety of sources, she plans to find unique items on our travels and offer them for sale. You can find her items for sale on the online marketplace, depop:

• Quirk Vintage – Hayley’s online store.

If you’re interested in my first foray into portrait photography, I’ll put up a gallery on my Facebook page.

• Oculus Reparo – Facebook gallery for this post.

As both of us love being outdoors, we decided to mix in a bit of hiking. Sort of a bird with two stones scenario for us. We get to enjoy some fresh air, nature and have a nice backdrop for doing a few more portraits.

Haldon Forest

Hayley took me out to Exeter, Devon for a nice day hike in Haldon forest. We strolled along enjoying the scenery as well as keeping our eyes open for any nice areas to stop for a photo. The drive up to Haldon forest is a beautiful one! The tops of trees dominate the skyline, quite reminding me of the Pacific Northwest back home.

Budget update

For those not already familiar with this website, know that it was developed as an experiment to try and become a travel blogger from scratch. Future budget updates may be done in a separate post, but for now they will be included here.

As mentioned above, I’ve spent the week in Hayley’s flat helping her move out, putting my lodging expenses at zero. We’ve opted to eat at home to save money. Furthermore, we’ve only chosen free activities to partake in. Such as hiking in the forest and taking a stroll along the boardwalk in nearby Paignton. Saving every bit we can, before we head out to explore the world!

Note: I’ve decided to place alcohol into a separate category for a few reasons. First, not everyone drinks alcohol! If you don’t, you’ll save quite a bit of money. Honestly, this is an overlooked cost of most anyone’s travel budget. New countries, new cities? You’ll definitely want to try the local offerings. Those pints here and there really start to add up!

Euro Trip: Travel Expenses

• Lodging: $0
• Food: $5.55
• Transportation: $0
• Activities: $0
• Misc: $0
• Alcohol: $13.56

Weekly travel expenses: $19.11

Cost per day: $69.53

Total travel expenses: $486.71

Website Expenses

Note: Domain, Hosting and SSL certificate were yearly purchases, which were included in the pre-trip budget.

• Weekly cost: $0
• Revenue: $0

Website has garnered only a minimal amount of traffic at this point. As this has only been shared with family and friends, that is to be expected. I’ve also yet to be approved for a Google Adsense account, which might have provided me with a few pennies! Ha, but really.

Weekly website expenses: $0

Weekly website revenue: $0

Website balance: -$1858.57

My total overall cost: $2345.28

I’d like to thank everyone that’s been following along so far! As this week has been mostly the business of moving Hayley out of her flat, I didn’t have much to write about. That being said, I’d like feedback from y’all! What type of content would you like to see in the future? What questions do you have so far? I know some may say that it isn’t fair or realistic to count free lodging, but I’d argue it is. Most every backpacker will spend some time enjoying free lodging. Whether it be visiting family or friends abroad. Meeting locals along the way and being invited over. As an exchange for writing a review or blog post. Or even finding a nice family to stay with on couchsurfing.com.

Feel free to write me on Instagram or Facebook

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Lastly, a photo for family following along at home!

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