It's nice to meet you
I'm Nick. And honestly? This site isn't really about me. It's about getting you out the door and onto the best trip you've ever taken.
Nick in Pisa
Wave to the drone!
How this whole thing started
Back in 2007 I went to Brazil, met some sloths, and that was pretty much that. Hooked. (If you ever make it out there, go and see the sloths. Cute doesn't quite cover it.)
So I built The Travel Tinker for one reason. To help you plan your own epic trip without the stress, the guesswork, or the forty browser tabs. I reckon the best way to teach is by showing, so that's what we do here. Real routes. Honest costs. None of the fluff you get everywhere else.
The goal's simple really. Show that travel can be safe, easy, and a proper laugh. Have a good poke around the site, and if something's broken or you're stuck on anything, just give me a shout.
A big thanks to my cousin Tom, who keeps the techy bits ticking over behind the scenes.
Up the I'AM Tower, Amsterdam
The camera comes too
Turns out showing beats telling. The trips behind these guides get filmed as we go, so you can see the walk from the station, the actual size of the room, and the bits that photos quietly leave out.
Places that left a mark
A quick run through the trips that stuck with me. Some were planned. Some really weren't.
Went for the sloths. Stayed for everything else.
South AmericaGot shipwrecked out here. Long story.
MexicoPartied. That's all you're getting.
GermanyCheered on the European champions.
The AlpsSnowboarded badly. Loved every second.
BudapestCrawled through caves I probably shouldn't have.
TunisiaQuad biked across the sand dunes.
ChernobylHands down the strangest place I've stood.
A bit more about me
Since you asked. Or didn't. Either way, here's the short version.
NICK
SEAT 1A · WINDOWThree things we always stick to
It's the line you'll see at the top of every page for a reason.
Real routes
Itineraries we'd actually do ourselves, not lifted from some press release. If we say a place is worth it, we've been.
Honest costs
Real prices in pounds, dollars and euros, side by side. No mystery maths, no nasty surprises when you land.
Zero fluff
Straight to the useful bit. Your time's worth more than scrolling past a thousand words to reach the actual answer.
Got a travel story worth telling?
Write for us. Posts can pay. Send your unique travel piece our way and we'll take it from there. We're always after fresh voices and places we haven't covered yet.
Meet the people behind the posts
Massive thanks to everyone who chips in. Fancy guest posting? Just drop me a message.
We've popped up here and there
Some links on this page are affiliate or partner links. If you book through them it costs you nothing extra, and we only ever feature people and places we'd actually use ourselves.
Who pays for all this
I do. Every ferry ticket, hire car, museum entry and disappointing motorway coffee comes out of my own pocket. There's no team here, no travel budget, no press trips. Just me, a laptop, and a growing habit of photographing car park signage.
The guides on this site are free and they're staying free. Ads cover some of the hosting. Affiliate links cover a bit more, and if you book something through one of them I get a small cut at no extra cost to you, which is honestly the easiest way to help.
But if you've used a guide, saved a bit of money, or dodged a mistake I already made for you, there's a Patreon. Patrons get early access to new guides, the map legends before they go on sale, and a say in what I cover next.
No pressure either way. If you'd rather just read the free stuff forever, that's genuinely what it's there for.
Grab your free Travel Starter Kit
Step-by-step planning checklists, handy guides, and a pile of money-saving tips to help you plan your trip like you've done it a hundred times.
Let's get you somewhere
Have a browse, find your next destination, and start tinkering with a plan.
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