I met my younger self by the banks of the River Thames earlier this month.
It was late afternoon, golden hour, the sun draping London’s buildings in an autumnal glow. I’d taken a leisurely walk along the South Bank with my camera, passing by the London Eye, the Royal Festival Hall, and the Southbank Book Market. Then I turned a corner, and there it was: the OXO Tower.
Immediately familiar, the OXO Tower was where I’d stood almost exactly 11 years ago as my blog, Stories My Suitcase Could Tell, was announced as the Travel Blog of the Year by the then-editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine at the 2014 Cosmo Blog Awards. It was a night that sometimes still feels unbelievable when I look back at it, the first time my writing was recognised on a larger scale, the first time I’d ever met other bloggers, the first time I’d ever attended a large media event.
Now here I was again, completely by accident, the day after another London industry event over a decade later: the British Guild of Travel Writers Annual Gala Awards in Marylebone, where I’d been shortlisted for Travel Blogger of the Year.
The sun was starting to set, and it felt like two versions of myself – of my life – were meeting for a moment. The twenty-something who was yet to get married, yet to move abroad, yet to restart her career and life from scratch, nodding in passing at present-day me, returning to the same spot in the British capital all those years later with a different life and perspective, but still writing, still putting words on the page, still searching for the stories.
That moment of time collapsing in on itself gave me a moment to reflect on all the years I’ve been writing and running this blog.
If I’m honest, until these past few weeks, the 14th year of the blog had been a bit of funny year for me as a writer, as I tried to work out “what’s next” in a changing media landscape. It’s also the first year in almost 17 that I haven’t been regularly writing as a journalist, and the year that my career as a book marketer (which I love) really picked up the pace.
I’ve had to squeeze writing into the margins of the day, but I still write, because I can’t not write. I wrote the introduction to acclaimed author Donald S. Murray’s reissued poetry book, Between Minch and Muckle Flugga, after a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation with him about his career, and I interviewed author Karen Swan about the finale of her Wild Isle book series. On here, I wrote and published five blog posts, on everything from climbing a mountain in Taipei to sipping wine in California.
All these years later, I still love writing for Stories My Suitcase Could Tell, even if at times writing a blog feels like moving against the tide in a world of TikTok videos, trending Substack posts, and AI-generated content. This corner of the internet has brought me things I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams when I was sitting at the kitchen table as a new graduate, playing around with Wordpress, or as a little girl scribbling daily in her fluffy 90s notebooks with glitter gel pens.
My stubborn love of old-school blogging paid off this year in very exciting ways, with the finalist nod at the 2025 British Guild of Travel Writers Awards, and the fact that two of my blog posts were also shortlisted in the AITO Travel Blogger of the Year Awards (one of them, A Coastal Walk to MacLeod’s Stone, even won the Silver Award!).
Attending the glitzy BGTW Awards in London at the start of November, surrounded by well-known writers and bloggers I’ve only ever seen online or in the pages of the national press felt completely surreal. I didn’t win, but it didn’t matter – I was genuinely delighted to have been a finalist, not mention having the chance to meet people I’ve known online for years, like Becki of Borders of Adventure and Victoria of Bridges and Balloons.
Those little nods of acknowledgement – whether an award nomination at a fancy media event, or a comment left by a reader on a blog post – are welcome boosts of encouragement to keep going, to keep writing, to keep finding the stories that make something click inside you.
But what really means the most after all these years is the community. Everyone who has ever read the blog, commented on my social media posts, replied to my newsletter, chatted with me about how much they love the Outer Hebrides or where to go in New York – those connections are what makes blogging in a changing online world truly worth it.
The twenty-something version of me that I saw on the banks of the Thames would be amazed to see where she had ended up, I think.
I felt grateful that afternoon, as I kept on walking past the OXO Tower towards the Millennium Bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedral, its dome glowing as the sun set and the skies slowly got darker.
Grateful to be back in London, grateful to have made the finals of the awards the night before, grateful to have been reminded of everything my younger self once dreamed of, grateful for all the incredible experiences this blog has brought me, and grateful that I kept going, kept putting the words on the page, year after year.
Endlessly grateful for all of you, too, for following along with my “suitcase stories,” because absolutely none of it would be possible without you. It’s been quite the journey, hasn’t it? And there are still more adventures to come, so here’s to year 15!
____________________
Annual Gala Dinner photo credit: Rogue Productions/BGTW
Leave a Reply