When I began blogging nearly two years ago I was motivated to share stories about my experiences living in Denmark and travels abroad. In the beginning my followers were friends and family – mostly my mom. Thanks mom! In that same time, my biggest surprise and delight in this process was discovering an incredible online community of like minded people from all corners of the globe. Today I engage with people around the world. It is amazing. I never dreamed that there would be so many who would be interested in my stories and share their own, inspiring me daily. Last month I was lucky enough to meet two of these people in person. In real life. In London. At the Royal Academy of Art. If you know me – all of these things make me very happy. Meeting interesting people while traveling and seeing art? Yes. Yes and YES. Oh. And bubbles. There may have been bubbles involved. Only one – I promise! We were working! On something cool. Together.

Processed with VSCO with f2 preset

Welcome to the Royal Academy of Arts

Relax – it’s easy – just join in

Here – read this! Explore here – it’s #FarawayFiles

Let London lead us to new travel blog inspiration

Today I want to introduce you to Katy – an Australian blogger living in London and author of Untold Morsels. And Clare Thomson – a British ex-journalist now blogger in Kent who writes at Suitcases and Sandcastles. Katy is saucy and savvy and knows how to manuever epic travel with twin toddlers in tow. It is impressive especially when you see where she takes them – from Italian lakes and Swiss alps to Melbourne and back. Clare is truly the nicest and brings a detail oriented yet approachable style to her posts about real castles and sandy islands – from the UK to the Greek isles and spots in between. I appreciate her honesty and trust her opinion, knowing it is fully vetted and thoroughly experienced both with her kids and without.

What drew us together online and was confirmed in person is a common love for a slower pace of travel. We share a desire to explore places deeper. A need to connect on a local level. We three are also interested in creating community. Here online and out there in the world. It is our goal to create a space where people can seek out inspiration and information and new destinations. We immediately agreed that this space had to be supportive and collaborative and welcoming. We hope you find that it is. Without further ado – I am beyond excited to introduce our new weekly blog link up and invite you to travel along. Add your post. Read others. Join us. This is Faraway Files.

Welcome to Faraway Files, the new travel link up hosted by Katy from Untold Morsels, Clare from Suitcases and Sandcastles and myself at Oregon Girl around the World

This is the place to link up your travel posts every Thursday. We want to make Faraway Files a great resource for all of us and create a weekly file of the best travel ideas on the web. We want to dream of faraway places, to make new travel plans and share our travel secrets. Inspire us to travel to places we’ve never considered before or revisit a place we thought we knew. We know that you can feel faraway even when you’re close to home so share your experiences of travels near and far wherever you are in the world.

We’d love you to join us in building a really supportive community who will inspire us all and share each other’s posts. All three of us will try to read and comment on every post and we’ll share them on social media too. Each week we’ll choose our favourites and highlight them on our blogs.

How it works:

• The link up will go live every Thursday at 8am, UK time, until midnight on Friday. It will alternate between Oregon Girl around the World, Suitcases and Sandcastles and Untold Morsels. This week’s link up is over at Untold Morsels.

• Link up one travel-related post and add the Faraway Files badge onto the post or your blog (code below) or link back to the hosts.

• Link ups work best if everyone shares so please comment on all three of the hosts’ posts and at least one other.

• Tweet us your posts (@suitandsand, @UntoldMorsels, @oregongirlworld) using the hashtag #FarawayFiles and we’ll retweet to our followers.
  

• We’ll be sharing all our favourite posts on our social media channels using #FarawayFiles.

• We’ll be adding your posts to our Faraway Files Pinterest board so do ask if you’d like to join us there.

• Love Instagram? Share your favourite photos from your posts with us, tagging #FarawayFiles and we’ll add our favourites to our Faraway Files Instagram feed.

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.untoldmorsels.com/welcome-faraway-files/" rel="nofollow" title="Faraway Files"><img src="//oregongirlaroundtheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/faraway_files_travel_blog_linkup_badge.jpg" alt="Faraway Files" style="border: none; height: auto; width: 200px;" /></a></div>