Footsteps
One trip, seven moments.
This isn't an itinerary and it isn't an advertisement. It's the same stretch of road we've watched people walk a few thousand times — from “I should probably go somewhere this year” to the week after you get home.
Take it slowly. Whichever step you recognise, start thinking from there.
Colour Up Holiday — colour up your holiday.
Keep going and you'll notice the page gaining colour as you descend. That's on purpose.
“I should probably go somewhere this year.”
It's rarely a decision. It's a thought — at your desk looking out the window, or halfway through someone else's holiday photos, or the evening after something difficult finally ended.
You have no dates, no destination and no budget. You just know you don't want another few months that look exactly like the last few.
A lot of people stop here. And stopping here tends to last a year.
Our part here
Nothing, at this stage. You haven't worked out what you want yet, so there's nothing for us to be useful about.
Why we travel →How we think about the whole business
You start looking, and it gets worse.
Fourteen open tabs, three apps, and a friend saying “oh, that place is beautiful”. Every option looks fine on its own. Together they turn into a wall of things that are all somehow the same.
The tiring part isn't finding information. It's not knowing which of it applies to you. You don't need a hundred places — you need the two or three that suit the state you're actually in this year.
Which is why we'd ask how you want it to feel before asking where. Quiet, or eating well, or walking until your legs give out, or doing absolutely nothing. Start from the feeling and the field narrows fast.
Our part here
You can do this part yourself. If you'd rather it took an afternoon than a fortnight, tell us three things: roughly when, who with, and how you want it to feel.
What kind of trip →Start from a feeling and the field narrows fast
You book the flight, and it stops being hypothetical.
The whole distance between “I'd like to go” and “I'm going” is one confirmation screen. People walk differently for a few days afterwards.
Everything else now has something to organise itself around: which leave to book, what to put aside, who's looking after whom.
It's also when the details start surfacing — where to stay, how many nights, whether to drive, whether your parents can really manage that much walking.
Our part here
This is usually where we come in. You know where you're going. We work on the difference between getting there and getting it right.
Where to go →By continent, country and season
Your case is open on the floor and you're slightly uneasy.
Not frightened — just the not-knowing. It's a good feeling, actually. It means you're genuinely leaving your ordinary life for a while.
It's also when the questions arrive: is that connection tight, will the hotel be what the photos promised, who do I call if something goes wrong.
On this particular night, one clearly written itinerary and one phone number that gets answered are worth more than anything else we could give you.
Our part here
We read the whole itinerary through once more before you fly, and make sure you know exactly who to call once you land.
What people usually forget →Useful whether or not you ever contact us
The air is different.
The first thing is never a sight. It's the air, the sound of a language you half-recognise, the particular wind outside an arrivals hall. You feel suddenly very awake.
It's also the easiest hour to ruin: no driver, the wrong exchange rate, twenty minutes dragging a case the wrong way. Lose this hour and the whole first day goes with it.
So the first transfer is the part we write out in the most tedious detail — which exit, who's meeting you, what the driver is called. Dull, and worth it.
Our part here
Of everything we arrange, the landing is the part we're fussiest about.
Ports we've flown →Every airport Timothy has actually landed at
The day you remember is usually the empty one.
Notice, next time, where your stories come from. Almost none of them happen inside an attraction. They happen when you take a wrong turn, or find a place with no sign on it, or sit somewhere for an entire afternoon doing nothing at all.
So we leave gaps on purpose. Not out of laziness — because the best parts can't be scheduled. All you can do is leave room for them to happen.
An itinerary packed end to end looks like good value on paper. You come home remembering only that you were tired.
Our part here
We leave the gaps deliberately, then quietly give you two or three options for the day you don't feel like moving.
Photographs →The best frames tend to come from the empty days
This is when you can finally count the colour.
The case is still unpacked and you're already going through the photographs. Give it a fortnight and the entire trip will have compressed into three or four images.
Those three or four images are the trip. What it cost and how many sights you got through — neither will survive the year.
Everything Colour Up Holiday does is aimed at those three or four images: making them better, making there be more of them, making them last longer.
Our part here
When you're back we ask one question: which part was the best? That's where we start next time.
Guest notes →What people said once they got home
Where the name comes from
Colour up your holiday.
Two people can go to the same place in the same week and come back with completely different accounts of it. One remembers queueing. The other remembers the night a restaurant owner sent over a glass of something and sat down to explain it.
The difference isn't the place. It's how you went.
That's what Colour Up means — to colour up your holiday. The colour is already there; we didn't put it in. What we do is make sure you don't walk past it, or spend the good hours in the wrong part of town, or arrive too tired to notice.
The whole thing is aimed at one moment: getting home and thinking, that was worth it.
You've reached the end. You don't have to contact us.
Take these seven steps and plan the whole thing yourself — that's genuinely fine by us. This page was written to be useful, not to be a hook.
But if you're stuck on one of them — it's usually the second — just say so. You don't need to have it worked out; one question is enough. Every step above has a way onward, or start from the travel notes.
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