My Midlife Adventure: A Travel Blog Journey

Inspiration comes in many formats and today whilst browsing and reading posts on other blogs I was inspired to research how “A Midlife Adventure” has developed.
I launched my blog on February 18th 2023 so nearly three years ago! Time has definitely flown and it’s hard to believe just how many places we have visited since then and how my readership has grown.

Travelling and exploring was always part of my life, initially with my children and then with my hubby after we rekindled our relationship after a 30+ year gap and eventually got married.
I’m not the most tech savvy person, which I’ll excuse with the fact that I’m a mid-lifer😊, so launching a blog was quite a steep learning curve and a mountain I’m definitely still climbing. Once you leave work you find your skills wane a bit and staying up to date with today’s technology certainly becomes harder. My statistics are maybe, therefore, not as awe inspiring as other blogs that are featured on the WordPress website but I’m still proud of my gentle ascent.

Photos from Spain taken on our travels in 2023:
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Top Left), The Alcazar in Segovia, (Top Middle)
The Retiro Park in Madrid (Top Right)

My Stats:
Over the last 3 years I’ve posted 153 articles so an average of at least one a week.
Last year I took a break of two months in the Winter when I temporarily lost my mojo and, therefore, produced 42 articles last year.

In 2024 my readership increased by 36% compared to 2023 and last year, in 2025 this grew again by another 110%. I’m currently making plans to try and expand this even more this year. My most popular posts are all travel based so there is an argument that I should steer clear of “Opinion” pieces or those based upon “Mid-life” but I think you also have to stay true to yourself. When I launched my blog I knew I wanted to do a bit of a mixture of all three and I’ve stayed true to that ideology.

I always find it really interesting looking at my visitor figures. Again this has grown over the last three years with an increase of 125% in 2024 compared to 2023 and then another increase in 2025 when visitors trebled year on year; I think that’s really impressive and I’m proud of myself.

More photos from Spain in 2023:
From the top left; Cordoba, Seville, Valencia, Granada, Barcelona, Girona

I find it really mad that people all around the world read my posts.

In 2023 my Top 5 readership by country was:
1. UK
2. USA
3. Spain
4. Malaysia
5. The Netherlands
with 29 countries finding my blog posts

This changed in 2024 to:
1. UK
2. USA
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. Greece
with 38 countries finding my articles

and then this year 2025:
1. UK
2. USA
3. Canada
4. China
5. Moldova
with 82 countries finding my blog posts

Yes, Moldova!!! This country sits between the Ukraine and Romania in Eastern Europe and has a population of about 3 million! Thank you! Mulțumesc!

WordPress also monitors how visitors find my blog or “referrals”.
When I started back in 2023 my top three referrers were WordPress itself, Facebook and then way behind this was Google.
In 2024 Facebook took over from WordPress and my referrals from Google grew.
In 2025, however, Google far outstripped anyone else with nearly three times as many compared to Facebook and with WordPress coming in a poor third.

Travel and Experiences:
So where have I been in the last three years? Well here is a quick recap:

Highlights of 2023:
Europe:
This was a really busy year, we spent 3 months travelling across Western Europe by train, visiting four different countries: Spain, France, Belgium, and The Netherlands, stopping at 29 different cities/towns.

Europe in 2023:
Top Row: Versailles, Chantilly and Tours in France
Bottom Rows: Ghent, Antwerp, Bruges and Brussels in Belgium

USA:
Then we popped home for 2 weeks before flying to the USA where we began our trip with 7 nights in Chicago before heading out on our first of two road trips along the famous “Route 66”. Our drive took 30 nights with 17 different stopping off points.

Ending Route 66 on Santa Monica Pier we then flew down to Florida where we took a break for 7 days before heading out on our second road trip following the Eastern Seaboard all the way up from Fort Lauderdale to Richmond, Virginia. It was important to us not to use any interstates or freeways so we used what we would call “A” roads in the UK or smaller.
Dropping the car in Richmond we boarded a train to Washington. Then it was onto Philadelphia before finally finishing our trip in New York.
38 nights and 11 different cities/towns.
Across both road trips I drove 5250 miles through 18 different states!

Photos from Route 66:
Top Row: Chicago, the start of Route 66, and Pontiac in Illinois,
Bottom Row: Riverton in Kansas and Oklahoma City

The Sunrise over Monument Valley, and the Sunset over the Grand Canyon on July 4th

Highlights of 2024:
Aside from visiting Crete in 2024, due to hubby’s ill health we remained in the UK where we managed a lot of day trips and a couple of overnight adventures, covering 25 different places.

Highlights of 2025:
By the start of the year, we were understandably fed up with being in the UK and so exited winter and started our adventures in February in the Caribbean visiting Barbados and Grenada.
March found us back in The Netherlands visiting Utrecht, Rotterdam, Delfshaven and Gouda.
In April we popped across the pond and revisited Las Vegas.
Then in May we flew to Morocco, (wow what a country!) where we visited Marrakech and Essaouira.
We spent a week in the Brecon Beacons in June before heading to London for our anniversary in July.
September found us in Cornwall and we ended the year by spending Christmas in Wales

Photos from the Caribbean: Barbados and Grenada

2026:
Plans are already in place for two trips in the first half of the year.
I’m also going to be revamping a few of my older posts, relative to the above highlights, which I know a lot of my current readers may not have seen.

If you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to my blog and keep reading because there are a lot more adventures to come!!