Getting the right balance - aka 'wanting my cake and eating it too'!

Recently divorced (after 24 years of marriage) and mutually agreed financial settlement finally sealed by the judge 6 months ago. Thanks to ex-H's generosity, I have been able to keep the former family home, where I have lived for almost 17 years - yay!

Unfortunately, in order to meet the affordability criteria for the (luckily for me, relatively small, particularly by today's standards) previously joint mortgage to be transferred into my sole name, I had to extend the term quite significantly. Mortgage would originally have been paid off in about 8 years time, but now (officially) has 16 1/2 years left to run

One thing I have recently done, although more as a security blanket for myself rather than as a purposeful OP, is to transfer the equivalent of a year's monthly mortgage payments to the mortgage. This is mainly so I have the security of knowing that if something happened, if I was seriously ill or in an accident, that I would have a year's breathing space on having to worry about how I'm going to pay the mortgage. Hopefully (fingers crossed) I will never need to use this for this reason and will get the benefit of finishing the mortgage a year earlier at the end of the term.

In the meantime, I really want to chip away at the mortgage as much as possible and get it paid off sooner, however I also want to build a new life for myself and travelling is a very very important part of that, for me. I travel exclusively to the USA (for the last 11 years) having 'done' most other places I wanted to go to before I was married.

I don't earn a huge amount, so I need to find a way to still be able to travel (albeit maybe not as frequently as before) but also chip away at the mortgage and bring the term down as much as I can - hence 'wanting my cake and eat it too!'

I work in a school, in a support role, so there are two months of the year I don't get paid for (although pay is averaged out over 12 monthly pay days). This also means I am restricted to travelling during school holidays, when prices are at their highest!

Extending the term has reduced the monthly mortgage payments by about £130 a month. I could just about afford this, but it would mean only being able to afford to travel about once every third year. I know this wouldn't be the end of the world but have, unfortunately, known enough friends/family my age or younger who have suddenly developed serious health problems, or suddenly passed away, to have developed a strong need to live life now while I have the opportunity to do so and not put things off until some vague point in the future that may or may not ever come.

I live fairly frugally. I keep to a strict budget that allows me, despite a fairly modest income, to do most of the things that are most important to me. However there is not a lot of wiggle room to accommodate mortgage overpayments, so I have decided that the only realistic way I can erode the mortgage term is by using any extra money that comes my way to chip away, little by little. eg I have recently changed my current account to one that pays interest and have transferred the interest into the mortgage each month. I also do survey and anything earned from these will go as OP to the mortgage. Sometimes rewards come in form of gift vouchers so I will transfer an equivalent amount to the mortgage when I spend these.
Hopefully there should be a (small) handful of these payments each month (but nowhere remotely approaching the £130 needed to bring it back to the original remaining term).
I shall be utilising the 'every little helps' theory

Apologies if this has turned into a bit of a ramble..... one drawback of living alone is no-one to talk to!