Travel

Want To Try Yoga At Home? This Is The Best Online Yoga Class....

in

I’ve been looking for an online yoga class for a long time – for those times when you’re living in a new place and haven’t found a class yet or you’re travelling and need some guidance on the move.

I was reading this article on keeping fit for winter on Cooler and came across Yoga With Adriene. She runs a YouTube channel with free yoga classes for you to practice at home. They range from beginner tutorials to forty minute vinyasa sessions.

I particularly like the fact that she does classes suited to your moods, yoga for when you are sick, for the mornings, for when you’re feeling the winter blues, for hangovers, for runners. Adriene doesn’t take the whole practice too seriously and gets that maybe you’re not that into the hippy dippy spiritual side of yoga (but also embraces it if you do!) That’s my idea of a good yoga tutor.

Why Living In The Alps Is The Best Kind Of Lifestyle

in

The season is slowly coming to an end – and I’m already starting to miss the mountains.

My life before moving here was quite different. Waking up at 6am, riding an hour on a busy commuter train into London and eating breakfast at my desk by 8.30am.

The beauty of working remotely from the Alps is I have so much more time to myself in the morning. I get to practice yoga, meet up with a group of girls to get sweaty with circuit training, go snowshoeing – all before sitting down at my desk at home to work 9.30am.

vita-coco-cafe

Yoga is the number one thing that gets me up and awake in the morning. But sometimes you need something else to wake you up, right? I find coffee a bit strong and overpowering in the mornings, but I’ve started hopping on the coconut water band wagon – and I absolutely love it.

Vita Coco have brought out their new flavour – Vita Coco Cafe – it’s contains 100% natural coconut water plus a shot of a espresso to give you that much-needed energy boost in the morning.

Number one tip? Serve it ice cold. We’ve wedged a couple in the snow outside before to keep them cool. When I’ve spent too much time in the shower and don’t have time to wait for the coffee to brew, it’s ideal to grab out of the fridge or throw in your backpack.

After that, it’s back to editing the magazine I work for, Cooler, before squeezing in a run or a walk up to our favourite mountain hut for lunch – La Crapahute. The pace in the Alps is something different altogether. Life is more about getting outdoors and being active, rather than sitting in front of the TV.

What do you find wakes you up in the morning?

#lessbrewingmoredoing

This blog post was sponsored by Vita Coco Cafe

Wild Camping In The Outer Hebrides

in

It’s 4pm on a Friday. I should be in the office. Instead, I’m sat on the edge of a cliff looking over a deserted beach with a beer in hand, watching the surf roll in below. This is the Isle of Lewis and Harris, the most north-westerly island in Britain, and there’s not a soul in sight.

It all started with a competition. One Wednesday night after a few beers, I entered a competition to win a weekend’s stay in a high-tech inflatable tent from Heimplanet. You just had to pick a destination in the UK you’d like to visit and say why.

I pulled up Google Maps. With the same deliberation that a monkey might give a dart flung at a dartboard, I chose the Outer Hebrides. A week later, I received an email saying I’d won. “Shit!” I texted my boyfriend Ed, “Now we actually have to go to the Outer Hebrides.”

I’d done no research. The flights were gobsmackingly expensive. All I knew was it’s very far away and they chain swings up in playgrounds on Sundays so children can’t play on the ‘day of rest’ – and I wasn’t even sure if this was true.

Three months later, we touched down in Stornoway airport on a tiny 36-man propeller plane. Air Traffic Control was waving to the pilot as we came to a halt. I could tell already this was going to be a place like no other.

Read the full piece on Mpora.com. Photos by Nina Zietman.

Is This The Best Place To Work In The World?

in

When you work remotely, things can get kind of weird. You start wearing really strange combinations of clothes. Singing to yourself becomes a regular occurrence because, y’know, no one is there to see or hear you mimicking Mariah Carey. Showering? Who needs showering?

There are definite perks to not commuting to an office everyday, but where does the balance lie? What would the ideal workplace be?

People often say things like ‘near the beach’ or ‘with sleeping pods for daytime naps’ or even just ‘with a decent coffee machine’. Well, I’ve come across somewhere with all of this…

Introducing The Surf Office. It’s a surf house located in Santa Cruz, California with co-working space for freelancers to come and work with others. It’s got a large communal work area with Skype conference rooms, a yoga room for post-work sessions, surfboard storage room because there’s a friendly reef break just 2 minutes walk away.

After work you can go for a hike, grab food from the organic supermarket down the road, head to the local brewery or just grab a drink in the surf house with your co-workers. The idea is you break up the monotony of a normal working day with fun, outdoor activities.

As someone who is now working remotely, this sounds like an awesome idea. It’s a chance to meet other people, get that work-life balance that we’re all hankering after. After all you can’t dance around in your pyjamas to the Frozen soundtrack with peanut butter on a spoon while co-working, can you…

The best news? They’ve got another Surf Office located in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. So c’mon then Europeans, when are we going?

Why You Should Go Surfing In Southern Portugal

in

We were invited by the very kind Clem from Bura Surfhouse to visit their surfhouse in Lagos, Portugal last month – for a long weekend of eating piri piri prawns, surfing and exploring the coastline.

You can read the full article here. In the meantime, these are reasons why you need to get down to that sunny, sunny end of Portugal…

It stays warm all year round

Well, the Portuguese would disagree with you here. But for us sun-starved Brits, 19 degrees in November is not bad going.

The waves are pumping throughout autumn and winter months

It can get big. Like really big. But the beauty of the Algarve is if the waves are too big on the west Atlantic coast, you can head around Cape St. Vincent and explore the more sheltered beach breaks along the south coast.

The people are so friendly

We stayed at the Bura Surfhouse and felt so welcomed, we were pretty much ready to uproot our lives and move their. Lively group meals with delicious Piri Piri prawns,  an outdoor pool, sunshine and a surf-hungry crew, ready to pile into a van and head for the beach – what more could you ask for? Check out their website here.

Portuguese food is really, really good

Pastel de natas (Portuguese custard tarts) are addictive, as Clem will testify. The seafood comes fresh from the market every day. There’s even a place that serves homemade olive oil and tomato flavoured ice creams. Yep, really.

It’s cheap!

Compared to other European destinations, Lagos is not too pricey – particularly in off season (from mid September onwards). Prices for accommodation drop and the beaches are way less crowded. Plus, some of the best experiences are totally free…

There’s plenty to do, even if you don’t fancy surfing

A few of our favourite expeditions included travelling around with TJ’s adventure crew eating mangos and exploring the caves along the south coast, browsing the fish market in Lagos, and walking along the cliffs overlooking Porto de Mos near Lagos.

It’s beautiful

As I said before, crowd-free Lagos in autumn is the Algarve at its best. You can really appreciate the beauty of the coastline without hundreds of families with screaming children clogging up the beaches.

You might even see dolphins…

We went on a stand-up paddleboard expedition from David with SUP Lagos – and were lucky enough to spot around 30 dolphins swimming on by!

How To Make Your Own Adventure In The City: The Urban Hike

in

I used to think hikes were for boring old people with green anoraks, bird-watching books and ugly boots. People like my parents. No fourteen year old wants to spend a Sunday traipsing around the Chilterns with their parents.

I could never have imagined a decade on I’d go hiking myself – for fun – without even the promise of two Scotch pancakes sandwiched together with Nutella (a family favourite) at the end of it.

When my friend Chloe came up with the idea of an Urban Hike, it was hard to say no. The idea was she would plan a route from Notting Hill in West London to Tower Hill in East London, stopping off at unusual, lesser known attractions along the way.

We started off at a cute Italian coffee shop – La Caffettiera on Kensington Church Street with pastries and coffee, toured through Kensington to Brompton Cemetery where Emmeline Pankhurst is buried. Here we also met a man who walks his blue parrots here every day. They even sit outside on lamp posts waiting for him when he goes to Sainsburys!

Then down through Chelsea onto the King’s Road where we were shouted at by taxi drivers, spotted food critic AA Gill and drank prosecco at a local food market near Sloane Square.

Next up past the swanky shops on Sloane Street to Hyde Park where we collided with the finals of an international triathlon competition.

This was followed by a jaunt past the Ritz, through the famous Burlington Arcade towards Soho where we ate a lunch of fried chicken washed down with American craft beer at Jackson & Rye.

Feeling a little drowsy after all the food and beer, we stopped off at the famous Algerian Coffee Store for a latte (it only costs £1.20 and is home to hundreds of types of coffee) – before hurrying down towards Hatchard’s, the oldest bookshop in the UK.

Then on to Fleet Street to climb up Monument before it closed. The view from the top is pretty spectacular. We finished by strolling along past to Tower Hill to our final stop, Wilton’s the oldest surviving grand music hall in the world, dating back to 1859. They still have gigs and music nights on here today.

For someone who calls herself a Londoner, the Urban Hike was a total eye opener. I saw places in the London that I never knew existed. Armed with water bottles and rucksacks, it felt like a real expedition – passing council estates and cemeteries, glamorous shop fronts, gay bars and office blocks on the way.

We met a few characters, argued with angry taxi drivers, ate doughnuts in Sloane Square, (nearly) went for a swim in the Serpentine and got a certificate for climbing the 311 stairs to the top of Monument. Three of us even bumped into acquaintances we hadn’t seen in ages. Who says you need countryside to have an adventure?

It took us around eight hours round trip to walk from Notting Hill to Tower Hill (with lots of long leisurely stops in between). Here’s the (rough) route in case you want to copy us… I’d highly recommend it!