about us
Let's Begin with a Story
A librarian and an engineer walk into a pub…
Bedraggled and starving, they stumble into Hanafin’s hoping for peanuts and the bartender immediately welcomes them in. The Engineer has a lively chat with a local innkeeper while the Librarian gets caught in a bizarre conversation with the beloved town drunk who alternates between Gaelic and slurred mush. Swallowing her pride and her Dingle Gin, the Librarian works up the courage to ask John the bartender if he has any food and without hesitation he replies “how ’bout I toss up a ham sandwich for ya?” He leaves his bar unattended while he runs upstairs to his personal kitchen to make a toasted ham and tomato sandwich for the weary foreigners, who unbeknownst to them have just begun a life-changing journey.
Meet the Storytellers
We are Clare (the librarian) and Eric (the engineer), a couple from the United States who have always loved travel and hiking. Like so many Americans, we assumed international travel would wait until retirement. That changed when Clare was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis in her 30s and we realized that NOW was the best time to see the world while Clare was healthy enough to still be active.
We experienced our first walking holiday in 2016, when we walked from inn to inn on the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland. That trip forever changed the way we look at travel and it sparked a fire in Clare during a dark time in her life. It inspired her to form a local hiking club for women and begin her travel blog Planes Terrains & Avocados. With experience in marketing and curating information, it was inevitable that Clare’s obsessive research and passion for walking holidays would result in Trips to Walkabout.
A Story becomes a Mission
Here at Trips to Walkabout, we introduce US travelers to the walking holiday style of travel. We sort through the many options, using our expertise to review and offer suggestions. We work with walking holiday companies to promote their product because we want them to succeed and we want to inspire the creation of new walking routes. Just like the companies we review, we believe the best way to experience a new place is ON FOOT and by STAYING IN LOCAL INNS. We embrace slow travel that respects and protects the land and people we visit.
Origin Story of Trips to Walkabout
If you want to know the deeply personal side of this website and how it came to be, Clare shares our origin story and why we chose to use the term walkabout. She opens up about her childhood growing up in a hippie community, infertility and health issues, midlife career shifts and more. It’s a great introduction to who we are and why.
