FtC Travel Connection Alex and James Lock

FtC Travel Connection wanderlust & adventure stories

ftc travel connection Alex and James PLACE I Call Home: Wherever we lay our hat! Instagram: @twosometravellers www.twosometravellers.com

Alex and James Lock are the creators of Twosome Travellers, a travel-based content platform backed by big brands and brimming with stunning images and helpful recommendations based on adventurous first-hand experience. Both hailing from the United Kingdom, Alex and James began their wanderlust with a five-month sojourn across Asia that prompted their desire to never return home. Now using Australia as their base, Alex and James travel the world and do what they do best—sample exotic cuisines, capture visually stunning explorations and hikes, review all manner of accommodations, and generally and most importantly, show us the road less travelled.

Australia is one of the best countries in the world to road trip! There is still so much we haven’t discovered in Oz and we plan to see more one day! But, of the stops we made that gave us that “jaw-dropping” moment, many were in South and Western Australia.

Lucky Bay, southwest coast of Australia. We had been driving for five hours that day and took a chance that the Lucky Bay campsite would have space for the evening. Despite seeing multiple signs saying it was completely full, we rolled the dice and drove an hour from the town to the coast just to “double check”. Driving through the national park, we saw at least ten vans driving away from the campsite, and we assumed they must have been turned away. We arrived at the entrance gate and noticed there was a booking website and a wifi hotspot! We managed to book the LAST spot for the evening on one bar of patchy signal! We couldn’t believe our luck. The sun was setting but we could still see how sensational the water was; it was some of the bluest hues we had ever seen with white sands and lots of furry, local kangaroos roaming around on the beach and in the campsite— just perfection!

Lake Macdonnell. When travelling across the Nullarbor, this was our first stop on the way. The lake is bright pink on one side and bright blue on the other—it’s mind boggling! What a sight to behold upon approach. We found the best campsite just past the lake where we could park our RV for the night. We woke up and were right on top of the ocean, and watching the sunrise in such a beautiful setting was such an amazing way to start the day!

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Indijup. We climbed down over the rocks an hour after sunrise to find the natural jacuzzi spa awaiting our entry. We enjoyed the relaxing rhythm of the waves as they slowly crashed through the surrounding rocks. We had the place entirely to ourselves, and soaked up every ray of the summer sun!

Port Willunga. This locale was home to the most incredible sunset we have ever witnessed in Australia. We had our own little cave where we sat and watched the sun turn the sky into oranges, reds, and purples before it faded into complete darkness.

Barossa Valley. Give us a bottle of good wine and a sunset and we’re happy for hours! The Barossa region has the most extraordinary feel; the vineyards are cozy and intimate and talking with the winemakers is like chatting with old friends. When it was finally time to leave this region, we all felt the pang of not wanting to leave at all! To console our melancholy, we took a number of wines to keep the Barossa feeling alive for many months (weeks?) to come!

Blue Mountains. It was Alex’s birthday and we had organized a glamping pop up tent on the edge of the mountain ridge within the Blue Mountains national park. The view was beyond dramatic with millions of trees within view and chirping crickets melodically calling for attention, and it was literally just the two of us for miles and miles.

What was one of your initial experiences with mountainscapes that really hooked you into wanting to chase mountain views around New Zealand for the year?

We wanted to visit New Zealand for a while before we finally made the three-hour trip across from Sydney. We had read a few blogs and seen some photos that made us want to take the trip, and we decided very quickly that we would like to drive a campervan through the country to see as much of it as possible. In travelling in this manner, we gained the flexibility to stay in some more remote areas. New Zealand is undeniably one of the most breathtaking countries into the world; the landscape is incredibly dramatic and had us chasing mountains throughout the entire island. The only way to describe the feeling in New Zealand is “magicat-every-turn”! There was never a shortage of “pinch me” moments that truly seemed too beautiful and inspiring to not be from a dream.

When you’re in nature, you’re either focused on the setting around you or on what you are doing, such as climbing a mountain. Time slows down and nature gifts you with the opportunity to experience your own quiet. It’s such a unique feeling of tranquility when you can truly power down and appreciate the calmness. When a challenging hike is involved, there is a sense of accomplishment, too! It’s an amazing feeling to reach a viewpoint and look out at the world spreading its beauty before you—it only enhances the physical accomplishment.

Travel blogs, magazines, and social media are our go-to sources for inspiration and they usually help us whittle down our options to the final mountains or locations that we visit.

We interact with other creatives in the travel industry and social media is also an amazing tool for us! Although we can be the ones serving up wanderlust inspiration, we use social media for that exact reason too, and it acts as a tool for researching trips and destinations. We also read travel books, travel blogs, and travel magazines, and we love watching travel documentaries such as Race Across the World, and David Attenborough’s Blue Planet!

What is your favorite thing about traveling as a couple? Do you have any special travel rituals or routines you do on all your trips together?

Every new experience, landscape, food, sunset, and road trip is shared with our favourite person! We luckily share the same passion to travel and we both love being on the open road and in nature, so it feels natural to be doing this together every day. We have been so fortunate to have spent time in beautiful places over the past couple of years, and we now have so many beautiful memories that we are able to reminisce about through our photos, videos, and journals—that is a wonderful gift! We often talk about the future when we have a family (if we’re fortunate enough) and hopefully we’ll have some fun stories to share with the little ones.

We always travel with lots of camera gear and so our biggest routine is doing a double and triple check of our gear to ensure we have everything! It is always our number one rule to back up our photos and videos to two separate hard drives at the end of every day.

Of all the places you’ve visited, where have you experienced the most incredible baths and/or showers?

One of our most memorable stops on our New Zealand road trip was Omarama Hot Tubs for a sunset soak in the wooden hot spas. The view of the mountain ranges under the MacKenzie sky was unbelievable!

We were lucky enough to enjoy an outdoor bath in our villa during our stay at Fushifaru Maldives. The outdoor bathroom itself was huge: we had a double vanity, an outdoor bath, and two showers. The tub was immense and we could hear the waves crashing on the shore as we enjoyed a memorable bath!

The best salty spa we have ever experienced was at Injidup in West Australia. The ocean waves come crashing through the rocks of the hot spa and create the perfect natural bathtub in the ocean!

A view is always wonderful, but it doesn’t have to be tropical! Although we love to picnic by the sea, we have experienced some really beautiful meals in woodlands amongst greenery and mountains. Fresh fruit is a picnic essential, but no al fresco meal is complete without a cheeky glass of bubbly, too!

In a dreamy Koh Samui sunset scene, you reflect on the notion of leaving stability, sharing, “Don’t be afraid of what could go wrong...Just think of what could go right.” What helped you to carry through with this perspective and stay present?

When we chat with friends or followers on social media about what we do, many of them tell us what they would “love to do for a living”. They also share that they wish they could do something different in their lives but are often held back by the fear of the unknown and apprehension around all the things that could go wrong. We totally felt the same before we decided to make the jump, sell everything, and change our lifestyle, too.

Some people might think we are avoiding responsibility or running away from life, but we feel like we are doing the complete opposite! There is honestly something so liberating and empowering about this lifestyle that we have never experienced when we’re at home or working a traditional nine-to-five job. We get to wake up every day and decide where we want to be and what we would like to achieve, and we get to explore that together. The best and most extraordinary part of this entire experience is being able to enjoy our relationship on a deeper level. There is a reason the saying goes, “Travelling long term will either make or break your relationship.” There is no way to hide who you really are, and while there can be trying times, we love spending every day together and sharing in the same experiences.

With the many roads and paths traveled, what are the things that affirm to you that you’re “on the right path”?

There are so many different ways in which people measure whether or not they are on the right path. We think it all comes down to the manner in which you measure success. For us, success is feeling motivated and passionate about what we are spending our day doing, and above all else, success is being happy! Of course, we need money to survive and ensuring we have enough to look after ourselves is important, but it isn’t the driving factor or force behind our lifestyle choice. If we are waking up feeling good and feeling happy, we know we must be doing something right.