Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 13 May 2026

Bali

Nigel was sixteen the first time he came to Bali. The photos look exactly how you’d expect: sunburned shoulders, long hair, skinny teenage limbs, standing somewhere impossibly far from home looking half-curious and half-lost. Bali was rougher then, less translated, and so was he. And somehow, even in those old photos, I can still see the same person.

Ten years ago, I came here for the first time too. I look different in those photos now—more tightly held together somehow. At the time, I thought travel was mostly about seeing new things. I didn’t understand yet how much an experience depends on who you are when it happens.

That’s the part I’ve been thinking about lately—not whether places change, but whether we do.

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 19 April 2026

Tasmania

There were more first times than I could feel. New places. New rhythms. New versions of a day starting somewhere we hadn’t been before. The kind of month that looks, from the outside, like exactly what people imagine when they think about travel—constant change, constant movement, something new around every corner. We move slowly—staying long enough in each place for the novelty to wear off… And for the most part, that’s what it was. But somewhere in the middle of it, I started noticing something I...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 12 April 2026

Sydney & Tasmania

A snowstorm wasn’t on my bingo card for Tasmania.We expected sun. We expected wind. We expected days that might be a little unpredictable.We did not expect to find ourselves in the middle of an April snowstorm on the way back from the north coast.We drove into it gradually.At first it was just rain. Then sleet. Then snow starting to stick to the road.Each shift felt small. Manageable. Easy to explain.Until it wasn’t.There were only a few cars left. The road started to disappear. Somewhere in the...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 18 February 2026

New Zealand, Part II

The water at Hokitika Gorge doesn’t look real. It’s a blue that feels edited — opaque, glacial, almost synthetic against the dark green forest pressing in on both sides. Cicadas thread the air. The rock beneath your shoes slopes toward something powerful and cold. It’s breathtaking. And it is not a place to push. This month wasn’t defined by the scale of what we saw. It was defined by knowing when to stop at the edge. I didn’t come away from this month with answers. What I came away with was something...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 15 February 2026

New Zealand

Some places don’t announce what they’re teaching you. They just let you exhaust yourself first. We drove six hours round trip to Kaikōura to see seals. The road unwound along the Pacific — cliffs dropping into slate water, waves tearing at rock, the horizon wide enough to feel cinematic. We told ourselves it was simple. Just a stretch. Just a drive. Just to see seals. And then we found them. Scattered along the shoreline, draped over sun-warmed stone as if gravity had given up trying to move them. Fl...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 5 November 2025

Florida Keys

In 2014, before we started slow traveling the world, we took our very first road trip together — a drive from Miami to Key West through the Florida Keys. It was part vacation, part compatibility test, and a full crash course in how two very different travelers learn to wander together. The Overseas Highway — 113 miles of sea, sky, and the spaces between. We were living in Houston, Texas, when the idea began — our first big trip as a couple. I wanted to talk about where and why. Nigel wanted to talk about when and how. He opened flight searches before I’d even finished describing the feeling I was chasing — something warm, tropical, and easy. I was dreaming in watercolor; he was booking in Excel.
By the time he showed me a grid of possible routes, I’d already changed the destination twice. When I finally revised his itinerary — swapping hotels, trimming miles, and adding detours — he didn’t blink. That’s when I realized this might actually work. We eventually agreed on the Florida Keys: close enough for comfort, exotic enough to feel far. Sunshine, salt air, and no passports required. That balance — halfway between logistics and intuition — has guided us ever since.

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 16 October 2025

Belize

We plan most of our travels like a slow-moving tide — always toward somewhere new, occasionally circling back when a memory is just too sweet not to dream about again. Those are the exceptions: the rare repeats.Belize is one of them. I’ve returned more times than I can count, chasing the shimmer of that first discovery — the water so clear it felt like glass, the conch shells glinting like tiny treasures on the ocean floor, the hum of nurse sharks and rays moving in slow motion beneath me. It’s...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 2 October 2025

Apulia & Matera

Ciao for now, Apulia. We spent a month in Italy’s heel last fall, and it was one of those stretches that sneaks up on you — sun-drenched, unpolished, and quietly magic. Lecce was home base, and what a base it was: a rooftop terrace with views of Santa Croce, a square buzzing below, and a tiny restaurant that treated us like regulars within days. Life there was cinematic, even in the ordinary. Grocery runs down golden-stone streets. Breakfasts of cappuccino and pasticciotto. Evenings when our host...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 22 September 2025

Medellín & Bogotá

We flew to Colombia for Demilade’s christening and were honored to return home with our friend Alison to her country. People thought we’d lost it — because for so many, “Medellín” still sparks images of the drug trade. What we found was something else entirely. Alison’s family took incredible care of us. I’m convinced she’s related to everyone in Medellín — the taxi driver, the waiter, the tour guide. A small city disguised as a sprawling one, full of warmth and connections. Say you’re going to Col...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 15 September 2025

Mauritius

You don’t expect to get flipped upside down in early retirement — or underwater. But Mauritius had other plans.We had just left Sevilla, where a month of tapas and late-night squares tempted us to stay forever, when winter pushed us south in search of holiday warmth. The Seychelles looked glamorous, the Maldives too expensive, the Canaries too crowded. Mauritius felt like the wild card: remote, affordable, and just far enough off the radar that it required intention to reach — a speck in the In...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 8 September 2025

Sevilla, Spain

Last November we lived in Sevilla — a month in a tiny apartment with a rooftop pool, across from a community center. Every evening our little square filled with life: kids kicking footballs against stone walls, parents chatting over drinks, the whole street humming with energy. We weren’t just watching a city. We were watching community in motion. We had planned to use Sevilla as a base, to take the train around Andalucía — Córdoba, Cádiz, maybe Granada — and collect highlights along the way. But...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 2 September 2025

Croatia

Nigel’s mum has lived an epic life — Cairo, Hong Kong, Tehran, Indonesia — but Croatia was one place she had never seen. At 88, she’s still going strong, so after visiting her at home in England, we all flew to Croatia — our very first stop after retiring.We explored up and down the coast. Wineries tucked between hillsides. Marinas glittering at sunset. Ancient towns where Roman walls still stand. Medieval marvels. Crystal water so clear it felt impossible. And waterfalls that made us stop and s...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 25 August 2025

Tulum, Mexico

Tulum wasn’t a vacation.It was a test.Could we live abroad for a month? Could early retirement actually work?We’d timed it with our Christmas year-end break from work. At first, it was just a holiday we extended. We even worked a bit from paradise — testing the digital nomad option before we knew whether retirement was real. Back then, both paths were still on the table.At the time, Nigel hadn’t retired yet. I’d been planning it for a decade, but he didn’t quite believe me. Tulum was our trial b...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 18 August 2025

Ireland

After a quick trip to Dublin, we spent a month in Ireland, and it wasn’t the Ireland of postcards or Instagram filters. It was better — and harder, and wetter, and stranger.We based ourselves in the twin towns of Killaloe and Ballina, straddling the River Shannon where it spills into Lough Derg. From there, we wandered outward in loops: Ring of Kerry, Cork and Killarney, Galway and Connemara, castles and abbeys everywhere, and finally the Dingle Peninsula — Ireland’s grand finaleKillaloe/Ballina...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 9 June 2025

Provence Region, France

We didn’t fall for Provence on day one. She’s not a show-off. She doesn’t try to impress. She waits. Lets you fumble with the language. Lets you get a little lost. And then, slowly, she seeps in. At first, I could barely order a coffee. Now? I’m speaking French, reading menus without a panic tap to Google Translate, and taking roundabouts like a local. (They make sense now. I’ve seen the light.)We wandered through towns that sound like poetry… Roussillon, Gordes, Lourmarin,...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 16 June 2025

Series Kickoff: The Affair We Both Said Yes To

After three months in Provence — where time moved like honey and our most pressing decision was rosé or red — we’re doing something uncharacteristic.We’re moving fast.Five-day stints. Rolling bags. Pub dinners. Fewer baguettes, more boots. We’re calling it an affair — short, passionate, and slightly disorienting — with fast travel.And it started, like all good flings do, with a warm-up weekend and questionable footwear.We kicked things off with family time in Minehead for Claire’s birthday — lon...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 23 June 2025

My Lover, My Dear: The Cornwall Affair

Our friend Annie said it over breakfast, pouring coffee while we packed our bags to move to the next county: “I’m too young to get old.”It landed like a toast. A challenge. A gentle reminder to keep saying yes to surprise.That line wrapped itself around our five days in Cornwall — days that felt like gifts we didn’t know we needed. We arrived expecting coastal charm and left feeling a bit undone, in the best possible way.There was the day we tried to see seven beaches but only made it to four.Be...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 30 June 2025

The Cotswolds: The Quiet Courtship Affair

Not every love story starts with fireworks. Some begin with footpaths.Cornwall had cliffs and sea shanties — bold moves, late-night folk circles, and a hidden gourmet hut on a bluff. The Cotswolds? It played the long game. All golden stone and dry wit. The kind of place that raises an eyebrow instead of making a scene.We walked. And walked. Between after hours pub parking lot parties with Icelanders and Essex-boy railroaders…and sheep who couldn’t be bothered, we fell a little bit in love.Someti...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 7 July 2025

The Lake District: The Wild Wanting Affair

It spit rain as we left Keswick, the fells socked in like a goodbye. A quiet weeping. A lover left too soon.We felt it, too.Five days nestled in a top-floor flat named for Catbells, gazing out at Derwentwater and three rugged fells, watching the weather shift by the hour — this wasn’t a vacation. It was a summer fling. Wild and fast and full of bruises and awe.We could’ve stayed another week. Maybe longer.The Lake District is unapologetically alive.The air is sharper. The people, heartier.Every...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 14 July 2025

Edinburgh: A Stormy Kind of Affair

We don’t often travel like this — five days, in and out. But sometimes a place doesn’t need long to leave its mark.Edinburgh was one of those places.We stayed in Leith, just steps from the sea inlet, in a little apartment where seagulls called outside our window and three Michelin-starred restaurants were within walking distance. I knew exactly what she meant.This city buzzes with vibes — kooky, weird, and wild. The kind of place where an Afro-Caribbean dance troupe might suddenly start practici...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 21 July 2025

North Wales: The Affair That Took Our Breath Away

We weren’t prepared for North Wales.Not for the signs that read like incantations.Not for the views that stole our breath.Not for how quickly this place would start to feel like something we’d miss before we even left it.We based ourselves in Conwy, a medieval walled town that looks like it was ripped from a fantasy novel — stone turrets, coastal mist, and a castle you can actually walk. One morning, we hiked into the Conwy hills, past Hen Eglwys Llangelynnin, a 12th-century stone church nestled...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 28 July 2025

Dublin, Distilled: The End of the Affair

We kicked off our month in Ireland with four fast-paced days in Dublin — beautiful, overstimulating, musical, fizzy, and exactly the kind of “fast travel” we’re glad to be leaving behind. Dublin marked the final chapter in our affair with constant motion. From here on out, we’re returning to something quieter and more lasting: slow travel.But what a finale.We toasted with rosé champagne under a cascade of flowers at WILDE. We rode the hop-on hop-off bus like proper tourists, soaking up sunshine...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal. • 4 August 2025

Series Recap: Returning to My First Love

We don’t usually travel like this.Fast travel isn’t our norm. But for one month across the UK and Ireland, we said yes to a different kind of love affair — the kind with early checkout times, rental cars, and just enough time to unpack your expectations before packing them up again.We called it The Affair.Each place offered something — awe, surprise, exhaustion, belonging, longing — and every stop became its own chapter in this unexpected, unforgettable series.In case you missed any, here’s the...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 10 May 2026

The Second Time Felt Different in a Way I Didn’t Expect

Nigel was sixteen the first time he came to Bali. The photos look exactly how you’d expect: sunburned shoulders, long hair, skinny teenage limbs, standing somewhere impossibly far from home looking half-curious and half-lost. Bali was rougher then, less translated, and so was he. And somehow, even in those old photos, I can still see the same person. Ten years ago, I came here for the first time too. I look different in those photos now—more tightly held together somehow. At the time, I thought tra...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 3 May 2026

You don’t run out of new places. You run out of ways to notice them.

Mornings in Sanur, Bali started to look the same. The light came through the same doors, we made the same walk to the kitchen, and asked the same quiet question—tea now or later. Nothing about it was new anymore. It was easy. Just… flatter than I expected. We hadn’t changed anything, and that seemed to be the problem. And then, without planning to, we started doing something different. I was at the statue at the end of the garden. It was early, and we’d just made breakfast. Almost without thinking,...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 12 April 2026

The Part Where You Know It’s Off—But Stay Anyway

A snowstorm wasn’t on my bingo card for Tasmania. We expected sun. We expected wind. We expected days that might be a little unpredictable. We did not expect to find ourselves in the middle of an April snowstorm on the way back from the north coast. We drove into it gradually. At first it was just rain. Then sleet. Then snow starting to stick to the road. Each shift felt small. Manageable. Easy to explain. Until it wasn’t. There were only a few cars left. The road started to disappear. Somewhere in the...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 5 April 2026

Calm Is Expensive

We stayed outside the park on purpose. That’s not how most people do Freycinet. You stay in Coles Bay, where everything is closer. Easier. More efficient. But we’d set up our slow travel month in Tasmania a little differently. We base ourselves in one place, then take shorter offshoot trips—just a few days at a time—to explore what’s around it. Bicheno was one of those. On paper, it didn’t make sense. More driving. More coordination. More time just getting to where we were supposed to be optimizin...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 29 March 2026

The Capacity Problem No One Talks About

We were standing on the lawn at MONA, surrounded by a few hundred people I hadn’t expected to be there. Music drifted across the grass. Lines formed and dissolved near the bar. People moved in that loose, social way that looks relaxed from a distance—but up close requires constant small decisions. Where to stand. When to order. Whether to stay or leave before it gets harder to leave. Nothing was wrong. But everything required something. And I could feel myself starting to carry it—not the event, but...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 22 March 2026

Before You Change Your Life, Check Your Capacity

We were sitting at the table in Sydney, trying to plan the week, and it was taking more effort than it should have. Nothing was wrong. No deadline, no pressure, no real constraints. But every option opened another decision, and every decision seemed to carry more weight than expected. It should have been simple. A few days left, a handful of things we might want to do before we moved on. I had already started mapping it out in my head—timing, routes, what fit where, what didn’t. Nigel was sitting ac...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 15 March 2026

The Problem Wasn’t Stress. It Was Endurance.

The first time I realized endurance could become a trap, I was lying in the back of an ambulance. My blood pressure had spiked to 220 over 180. The EMTs gave me nitroglycerin and waited for it to drop. It didn’t. I remember hearing one of them say “uh-oh” before telling the driver to move faster. For most of my life, I believed endurance was proof of strength. It took years to understand that endurance can also hide a system that has run out of margin. That moment should have changed everything. It...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 11 March 2026

Why We Don’t Fight. We Coordinate.

Last week in Sydney, the plan broke. The apartment was wrong. The month wobbled within thirty minutes of landing. But we didn’t. Not because we’re unusually calm. Nigel and I are complementary. I write. He reads. He drives. I navigate. I’m sassy. He’s sweet. He analyzes details while I hold the big picture. It looks seamless now. It wasn’t always. When we first started dating, planning trips was our standstill point. I’d be talking about the kind of experience we wanted — beach or mountains, movement or res...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 8 March 2026

The Plan Broke, We Didn't (Bedbugs & Dodgy Rentals)

New Zealand cried when we left. Rain streamed down the airplane window in dramatic sheets, the kind of send-off that makes you believe you’re closing a chapter properly. What we didn’t know yet was that the next one would fracture in under thirty minutes. We don’t perform when we travel. We relocate. Month to month. Country to country. Suitcases as infrastructure, not props. Which is why what happened when we landed in Sydney mattered more than a bad Airbnb. It threatened the structure we had designed...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 1 March 2026

Not Every View Requires Full Exposure

From Sydney, the Blue Mountains already feel quieter than they did a few days ago. We could have gone all the way to the bottom. That’s what the trail offered at Wentworth Falls — stone steps dropping beyond the lookout, railings twisting downward into the valley, the promise of standing at its most intense point. We had already been hiking for nearly three hours. The descent continued. So did the invitation. There is something about a staircase that makes me believe I’m morally obligated to finish...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 22 February 2026

The most luxurious thing travel gave me wasn’t a place.

We almost always commit to at least a month in one place. That’s our rule. It’s part of how we protect our energy. New Zealand was different. It’s wide and spread out, and I let myself believe we could compress more into less time. I didn’t plan as carefully as I usually do. A little cocky, if I’m honest. When we returned to a full 30-night base, entire categories of decisions disappeared. We stopped scanning for something better. We stopped reopening plans we’d already made. The container removed u...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 8 February 2026

You’re Not Avoiding the Decision. You’re Waiting for Readiness.

After a season of change, something strange can happen. Not in the big moments — in the quiet ones. You’ve done the brave part. You’ve made the shift. You’ve admitted what wasn’t working. And then… you stall. That pause is usually misdiagnosed. Not because you’re lazy. Not because you’re secretly sabotaging yourself. But because the next step won’t arrive on command. That’s usually when self-doubt shows up. If I were clearer, I’d know what to do. If I were braver, I’d commit. If I were more disciplined, I’d...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 1 February 2026

How I Knew My Life Was No Longer Working

My life was working — and that’s how I knew it wasn’t. Nothing was wrong. That’s what made it so confusing. I had a good life. A successful career. A marriage I loved. Kids finding their footing. Health. Stability. Options. From the outside, it worked. Inside, something kept drifting. Not dramatically. Quietly. I didn’t wake up unhappy. I woke up flat. The days were full, but they didn’t land. Conversations repeated themselves. Weeks blurred. Even good news felt oddly weightless. I kept waiting for motivation to...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 25 January 2026

If You Need Proof, It’s Too Early

The day I retired, I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt watched. Not literally — but by the careful questions. The head tilts. The concern that never quite said judgment, but carried it anyway. We had done the math. Built the plan. Chosen this life deliberately. And still, the morning after we stepped away from work, I woke up with a low, humming vigilance I couldn’t ignore. Not panic. Not regret. Just the sense that something important had been set in motion — and hadn’t settled yet. I recognized the feeling i...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 18 January 2026

You Don’t Need Clarity. You Need Something Steady.

Most advice assumes change arrives with clarity. A signal. A moment. A feeling that tells you what to do next. Perth didn’t offer that. It worked on us quietly — through light, water, movement, and systems that made it easier to exhale than to perform. Nothing announced itself. Nothing demanded certainty. The steadiness came first .If you’re in a season where decisions feel heavier than usual — where you’re acting on partial information, managing a nervous body, or trying not to burn everything down ju...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 12 January 2026

When a Decision Stops Shouting

Big life decisions rarely arrive with certainty. More often, they show up as questions — from family, friends, and ourselves — about whether we’re being careful, reckless, or quietly ready for change. In the weeks before we leave, the questions start stacking up. Not from one place. From everywhere. My dad asks why I’m spending so much time “working” on my writing. Aren’t you retired? My son wants to know if we’re still shopping for a new place to live — or if that idea has quietly expired. My brother a...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 8 January 2026

Psychogeography: How Place Rewrites Us

We like to believe our habits live inside us. That confidence is a trait. That focus is a virtue. That creativity is something you either have or you don’t. But place edits all of it. Quietly. Relentlessly. Often without our consent. I’ve watched this happen to me in ways that felt personal — until I realized they weren’t. In some places, I’m decisive and calm. In others, restless and scattered. In a few, unexpectedly brave. Same person. Different latitude. This isn’t mood. And it isn’t motivation. It’s environ...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 4 January 2026

Who Are You When the Context Changes?

I’ve been shape-shifting longer than I realized. As a kid, fitting in felt urgent. Necessary. Not aspirational — survival-adjacent. I wore an eye patch. Had teeth big enough I could slip my pinky between them. Skipped kindergarten, which meant I was always the youngest in the room — a full year behind at an age where that gap mattered. So I learned early how to watch people. How to mirror tone. How to adjust just enough to belong. Later, that instinct found more respectable disguises.
Church three times a week. Workplaces with unspoken rules. Cities with personalities you’re expected to absorb. I got very good at reading the room and becoming legible inside it. Which is why it surprised me how destabilizing it felt when those rooms disappeared.

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 28 December 2025

Change Isn’t the Problem. Loss of Structure Is.

Change doesn’t just ask us to begin again. It asks us to let something go — often quietly, without witnesses, without language. Twenty-six years ago, I was in a hospital room just after midnight on New Year’s Day, in labor with Quinn. The world was holding its breath. Cameras waited outside the hospital because the clocks might break, planes might fall out of the sky, and the future might glitch and disappear. Y2K was supposed to be the great rapture. I told them they were welcome to come in with a...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 22 December 2025

Awareness Is Not Fear: A Practical Safety Layer for Uncertain Times

With the holidays coming up, I wanted to share this now — something you can read, save, or come back to when travel planning feels quieter. Over the last few weeks, more people have said some version of the same thing :“I don’t feel afraid — I just feel more alert. ”Travel feels different right now. Public spaces feel different. Even familiar places carry a slightly sharper edge. This isn’t about fear. It’s about awareness — how to move through the world with calm, confidence, and practical situational awareness, especially while traveling. That feeling isn’t weakness. It’s awareness trying to find language.

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 21 December 2025

Moving Through the World With Awareness

I’ve learned that the goal isn’t to feel fearless. It’s to feel oriented. To know where you are — in a place, in a moment, in yourself —and let that steadiness guide how you move. For years, people warned me about certain places before I went. Kalimantan. Medellín. Central America. The kind of warnings delivered with lowered voices and raised eyebrows — more feeling than fact. So when I landed in Kalimantan in 2014 — pinch-hitting on a work trip for a colleague who couldn’t travel — I did the obvious th...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 14 December 2025

How We Slow Travel One Month at a Time

We didn’t set out to become slow travelers. We just wanted our days back. One month abroad showed us a different way to live — slower, steadier, and more rooted in place. In my early 50s, I stepped out of full-time work, kept a tiny home base in Houston, and decided to try a one-month stay abroad — just to see what it felt like. Here’s what it felt like: We stopped rushing. We started noticing. And somewhere between the grocery aisles and the long walks with no destination, we realized we were slowly b...

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 11 December 2025

Every Menu Is a Minefield

They say travel broadens your palate. Mine just tries to kill me. Pineapple, avocado, strawberry, walnuts, pecans, bananas — all banned from my personal paradise. And the cruelest part? I know exactly what every one of them tastes like. It started at thirty, right after a major illness. One day I was fine. The next, my body decided to go rogue. These days, every restaurant feels like a trust exercise — with strangers holding sharp knives.

Benthall Adventures — A Slow Travel Journal • 7 December 2025

The Strange Season of Not-Here, Not-There: Coming Home After a Year of Slow Travel

We’re back in Houston after a year on the move, returning home after a long stretch of slow travel. But this return feels different — not the short, visit-before-heading-out-again feeling, and not the fully-at-home feeling either. It’s the in-between. The quiet wobble of being somewhere familiar without fully anchoring to it. Friends are working. Family is busy. The days look the same, but they don’t sit the same. It’s like someone lifted our life, shook it gently, and set it back down half a degree...