Thom & Sean

https://www.thomandsean.com

Age: both 28

Hometown: Thom’s hometown is the market town of Shrewsbury, Sean’s home town is the capital city of Wales – Cardiff

Quote: “Looking forward to not thinking about tomorrow.”

How did you find out about Vagabonding, and how did you find it useful?

It’s been a long time now but almost certainly through twitter the hash tag groups #rtwsoon and #rtwnow have been invaluable. Yes, we love vagabonding, loads of cool tips that have really helped us out.

What is your job or source of travel funding for this journey?

Thom and I both quit our respective jobs to travel but we saved like demons to get on the road. Thom was a theatre technician at the Bloomsbury Theatre and Sean worked for the government in the Ministry of Justice, but he also ran a successful photography business on the side.

Do you plan to work on the road?

We’ve got three phases for our trip:

• Phase 1 – America, New Zealand and Australia’s Great Ocean Road – we shouldn’t need to work to cover this as our savings should be enough
• Phase 2 – living in Melbourne (12 months) we will be working to support ourselves in Australia and hopefully we’ll be able to put by some money for Phase 3
• Phase 3 – the long road home through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, China, Russia and northern Europe. Hopefully we’ll have saved enough before phase one and in phase 2 that we can do all of this, if funds run out and we can get work during phase 3 we may do, if not we’ll head home a bit early.

What was the reaction of your friends/family/colleagues as you planned your trip?

Because we’ve been talking about this literally for years, this has meant that some people are now really really shocked that we’re actually going. It’s been something that has, to them at least, always been something we talked about, and to be actually doing it is a little shocking. Friends and family have been absolutely behind us all the way. We’ve had friends help us paint our old rented house before we moved out, join us in the car boot sale, donate gifts for the trip or even cash to help fund the trip. Honestly, we are really really grateful to have such supportive friends and family and we’re going to miss them terribly!

Any tips or lessons learned from the travel-preparation process?

Oh yes. Thom is definitely one of life’s planners, whereas Sean is one of life’s make it up as you go along. This has been the perfect combination for us; it’s meant that Thom can plan the USA leg down to the day and Sean is more than happy to go along with it. If something breaks down on the road it’ll be Sean’s job to use his powers of winging-it to get us back on the road; teamwork 😉

Second thing – forecasting the budget. Sean used his skills from work to create some beautiful spreadsheets, one is the forecast savings spreadsheet so that we could tell how much money we needed to put aside to find the trip and the other is the budget spreadsheet which will keep us on budget whilst we’re on the road.

This is incredibly boring but we know from experience of our friends that if we’re comfortable to plan as much as we have (we are) then we can make the most of it by matching the money we need to spend.

We’ve recently done a blog post to help other travellers to copy our system.

How long do you hope to spend on the road?

All in all we’ll be away from home for two years – a year of that will be actually moving around and another year will be spent in Austrlia (Melbourne). Unless of course we find a way of making it last longer 😉

Which destinations do you hope to visit?

The US we’ve planned day-by-day – mostly because it’s helped us to adjust to the change and secondly because the US will be the most expensive part of the whole trip. If we start a world trip in the US with no plans we’ll be out of money in no time.

We’ll be visiting New York, Chicago for July 4th celebrations, Nashville, Louisville, Natchez for cool camping and long slow drives, New Orleans for hedonism and to take in the amazing food and culture, Austin TX to see Thom’s best mate from Uni and his new wife, Lufkin TX to hang out with some cool TExans who couchsurfed with us last year, Carlsbad and Mammoth Caves for caving, Alberqueque, Flagstaff we’ve heard is great fun, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas for one night only! , Los Angeles, Big Sur for the surf and the surfers! and finally San Francisco because it’s beautiful and has cable cars!

New Zealand is deliberately unplanned, we want to do the oppostive of the US. We’re hiring a campervan and we’re going to see whatever we come across.

For Austrlia we’re doing the Great Ocean Road – again we’re not planning much for Australia until we’ve got it in front of us.

For the Asian, Russian, Europe bit plans are very sketchy as yet, we know the countries we want to visit and we have an idea of what we’re doing but we’re going to make it up as we go along.

Which experiences are you most looking forward to?

Sean – I’m most looking forward to not thinking about tomorrow. I think and plan a lot about the future but I’m really looking forward to living in the moment, living for today. I can’t wait to read a lot, and write a lot and just relax. I am REALLY looking forward to meeting people, I love meeting new people and talking about grand things and small things.

Thom – I’m most looking forward to seeing the American countryside and the big skies. I’m looking forward to all of it! The juxtaposition between busy cities and quiet camping.

What are you packing for the journey?

Not a hell of a lot actually, well it doesn’t weigh anywhere near as much as we thought it would. We have a 80L rucsack each and we’re taking clothing to last about 8 days which we’ll then wash and re-wear. We’re not going overboard on tech – we’ve an iPod Touch each, a netbook and a digital camera (not SLR), we’re taking a tent and Thom’s mum has knitted us a special extra traveller to take with us, called ‘Tweedie Jeff’. You can see more of him on Thursdays!

Do you have any worries or concerns about the journey?

Not really. We’d be gutted if we ran out of money and had to come soon before we were ready but we’re pretty confident that’s not going to happen.

The scary stuff has happened – we’ve left our jobs, our friends and our home, and we’re about to say farewell to family – but for the journey itself, it feels like a dream that’s about to come true 😀

How can we best follow your adventures?

The absolute best way is definitely the blog – thomandsean.com but another realiable back up is our twitter account. We do have a facebook group and you can expect to find all our photos there, but we’ll always use the blog to alert people to cool or intresting stuff

Are you a Vagabonding reader planning, in the middle of, or returning from a journey? Would you like your travel blog or website to be featured on Vagabonding Case Studies? If so, drop us a line at casestudies@vagabonding.net and tell us a little about yourself.