What is workaway?

Quite early in our travel planning we came across a website called Workaway. Immediately we knew that this was how we wanted to travel.

The Workaway concept is that travellers can work for a host in exchange for food and accommodation. Typically the work may occupy 5 hours a day for 5 days a week, leaving you with plenty of time to explore the local area. The work offered on Workaway is varied, from farm work to helping run a hostel. There is definitely something for everyone! The length of time that you stay with a host for is entirely up to you.

We spent some time setting up our profile (Workaway allows single or couple profiles), detailing our experience, our interests, and where we want to travel and then the searching begun! Workaway has so many hosts the choice can be slightly overwhelming. We narrowed our searches down by country and then searched by some of our interests e.g. "guitar", but if you have time it's quite nice to browse through other hosts to make sure you don't miss something you never would have thought of searching for. After finding a host you like the sound of you can contact them through the Workaway website. Not all hosts will reply to you, and some might not be able to host you at the time you want, so we sent out a few emails at a time and crossed our fingers for replies. Hopefully the hosts will think you're a good fit and you can start arranging your trip.

Hosts are also able to search for and contact travellers, and in the run up to our trip we also had hosts messaging us to ask if we would like to go and stay with them!

Workaway really appealed to us as a great way to keep the costs of travelling down, while trying some exciting new experiences and meeting some interesting people along the way. This blog will record our journey.

A week in Keswick

Before we set off for Europe we have spent a week enjoying the countryside right on our doorstep in Keswick.

We stayed in a beautiful cottage (Acorn Lodge) with Elaine, Neil and Corinne only a 5 minute walk from the centre of Keswick.

This week I have been trying to get into lager drinking and Keswick is great for this, full of pubs stocked with beers from local breweries. We spent Tuesday night in The George attempting the pub quiz and were quite pleased with fifth place (out of 12)! Thursday lunchtime was spent in the Dog and Gun, which is famous for its Hungarian Goulash- a hearty beef dish with dumplings, new potatoes and garlic bread. Yum! Definitely not to be missed by anyone visiting Keswick. On Wednesday we spent the evening sampling beers from near and far in Magnolia Belgian Beer Bar- a cosy bar with an amazing choice of drinks. Unfortunately, this was slightly wasted on a beer novice like me!

A trip to Keswick is not complete without donning some walking boots! We started the week with an easy walk up Castlehead. This is a short, sharp walk with very quickly rewarding views. Within 45 minutes we were back at the cottage with our feet up, having seen some amazing views over Derwentwater, Bassenthwaite and beyond! Up here I captured this great picture of Craig gazing into the distance.

We have also been using this week as an opportunity to try out the GoPro Hero 3+ that we will take away travelling with us. I think it did a pretty good job of capturing the views from Castlehead.

Next up was Catbells. This is another walk with amazing views right from the start. We took the ferry over Derwentwater to Hawes End, and from here you get a great view of the walk ahead.

There were some surprisingly scrambly bits of the walk, which I found slightly nerve wracking. Craig bounded up these bits no problem, of course! But a little team work got us both to the summit.

After walking for only around an hour we reached the summit and the views were amazing, although it was a little blustery! This is the perfect walk for great views of the lakes over a relatively short distance (6.8km round trip from Hawes End jetty in 2.5 hours, allowing for lunch and photo stops).

  

On top of walking and drinking we have also managed to squeeze in some fun and games. We had a game of crazy golf in the sunshine, where we were all thrashed by Neil, marvelled at illusions in the Puzzling Place, and spent evenings competing at board games. 

Keswick has been great fun and an awesome start to our adventures!