Hi, I'm Jen!

Hi! I'm Jen, a twenty-something, dog-loving, vegan metalhead and part-time globetrotter from the UK, and this might be my tenth(?) attempt at running a blog!

I have spent my whole life documenting *everything*. Every photo taken a) by my parents when I was young and b) by myself from my teens onward has been meticulously organised and stored. Every trip I've ever taken has been carefully chronicled, for public or personal viewing. I have gone through multiple phases where I've poured my feelings and concerns into journals, blogs, and vlogs, especially during the more poignant events in my life. In many ways, I've been blogging longer than I've known what blogging is.

As many of us have found, instagram has been a fantastically straightforward and powerful way to document and blog. Apart from my facebook, my personal instagram has been my single longest-running social media account. Since late 2011, I have started additional pages - those still running include @jenheartsdogs, so far my most successful account, where I post dog pictures to my heart's content (and for an encouraging audience), and @ontourwithjen (previously global_jen), which I started up at the end of 2017, shortly after I finished my Master's degree! And now we are here!

I have tried to maintain a reasonably high standard with the photos I post on @ontourwithjen - I am constantly inspired by the most successful travel bloggers and instagrammers, and follow a similar format to many of their pages. As well as periods of posting miscellaneous travel photos, I have tried posting trips in a journal-style format. I am super lucky to have been able to visit some truly incredible places, particularly over the last couple of years, and began solo travelling at the start of 2018 which I now adore. So far I have documented the entirety of my 2017 trip to Split and Dubrovnik in Croatia with one of my best friends, and - as of May 2019 - I have posted around 75% of my 2018 New Zealand adventure!

I love telling the stories of my experiences, as well as talking about the places I've visited themselves, whether that be in relation to their history, or their geography, for example. I adore following the adventures of others, and being inspired both by the places they've visited, and the way they capture their experiences through photography. I am not much of a photographer, but I think there are certain qualities that work particularly well on instagram which I have managed to incorporate into my shots.

While I think micro-blogging on instagram will always be my favourite way of sharing content - certainly, it has been the form of blogging I have stuck with the longest - I really want to give traditional blogging another go. My blogs in the past have essentially been travel diaries, including *very* long posts that even I struggled to get to the end of. Now the "chronicling" side of things can be done with ease via instagram (the form of documentation I feel compelled to carry out), I would love to try writing some "proper" blog posts. I want to share the most exciting places I've visited, the most relevant tips I've discovered, and the most important lessons I have learned along the way. Most of all, I want these posts to be tangible for an audience of people just like myself.

ontourwithjen, the blog, is still very much in its infancy, as you can see, but I am really excited to make this platform a big part of my content-sharing life! I hope to share my adventures with you, with tips, lessons, must-sees and reviews. I also hope to throw in the odd lazy-vegan food review! I will never have my own vegan blog with healthy eating tips or recipes, as I have no experience in either of those things! If you're looking for the best accidentally-vegan biscuits or a recommendation for a vegan ready meal, however, I am your man!

I really hope you'll continue to come back to ontourwithjen (in both instagram and blog form) - I will do my best to share and promote my articles, but make sure you subscribe to my mailing list to be updated whenever I post! I can't wait to embark on a new kind of journey with you all!

Jen xx