About Broad River Travel Gems

A small, independent travel journal about slowing down and staying a while.

Broad River Travel Gems began as a notebook and never quite grew out of the habit. It is written by Sarah Mitchell, who spent too many years racing through cities with a checklist before discovering, more or less by accident, that the best trips are the ones where very little happens. These pages are the result: honest, first-person notes on city breaks, coastal hideaways, slow travel and the easygoing villa stays that make a holiday feel like living somewhere.

There is no house style here beyond a stubborn preference for the unhurried. We would rather spend a week in one town than a fortnight racing through ten, rather take the slow train than the quick flight, rather have a pool of our own than a resort's. If a place asks to be rushed, we tend not to write about it.

Everything you read here is based on real trips, taken slowly and paid for ourselves. We do not chase press junkets or fill the calendar with sponsored dashes. When we recommend somewhere, it is because we lingered long enough to mean it. The aim is simple: to be the friend who has just come back from somewhere lovely and cannot wait to tell you how to do it properly.

Have a tip, a question, or a favourite quiet corner of your own? We would genuinely love to hear it — write to us any time at [email protected].