Great Gap Year Hunt

benscholes

I worked the summer season for a company called Acorn Adventure three summers in a row. The pay is minimal (80 euros a week when I first started there) but food is included and you get a big frame tent to live in. I worked in the south of France but they have sites in Spain and Italy. It's an adventure holidays company and pretty much anyone can get a job there working as centre support - washing pots, cleaning tents, serving dinner to the school groups. It's really hard work but I had the best three summers of my life there - it's a bit like going to university but getting paid to do it and not having to write essays! I think you can apply online at there webaite - if you type in acorn adventure reqruitment into a search enginbe the site should come up.

stella123

I'm planning to travel for a year or two once I've done up the house I'm moving into tomorrow (12 months from now) specifically to renovate and make a profit. We are age 41 & 54 (both female). We looked at the gap year for grown ups website and for those who are looking for paid working trips then China offers cheap teaching placements where you get accommodation and a local wage for up to one year (you also get an equivalent TEFL certificate) - see http://www.gapyearforgrownups.co.uk/Brochure-Request. Apart from that everything seemed quite pricey and structured so we have decided to travel for the sake of travelling probably using a mixture of budget airlines, trains, https://www.laterooms.com and expedia etc - chasing the cheap internet deals as we go along. We are also considering putting our home on a house swap site (http://www.homeexchange.com/) so we can trade accommodation across the world from a few days up to months at a time. I think that for our age group and gender and as fairly neophyte travellers (apart from a bit of independently organised city travel in europe and NYC) then it's literally unchartered territory for us - there just doesn't seem to be much information around about organising an 'unstructured' year of travel. We aren't interested in hostels (too long in the tooth!) but by the same token we don't want to blow our whole budget on hotel rooms so we're looking for clean and well-equipped apartments, cottages etc to mix in with hotel stays. If there were a foreign equivalent of the £20 Travelodge rooms I'd love to hear about it as they are the perfect budget rooms IMO.

justin_1975

The girlfriend and I recently returned from a 2 year gap year (does that make sense??). We left the UK with £4000 each and a one-way ticket to Sydney, stopping in Thailand. We had a 9 month stop-over in SE Asia - visiting hailand, Cambodia, VietNam, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.

When we arrived in Oz we both worked for 6 months (3 months in Sydney and 3 in Melbourne) me as a valet parker her in Admin. We shared flats in both cities to cut the costs. With the remaining 5 months we did the whole of the loop and up and down through the centre twice, plus a month in NZ. To get around we relocated campervans, so never had to pay for fuel and stayed over in laybys/rest stops along the way.

Then off to Central America for 4 months (Mexico, Guatemala, Hondouras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvadore and Panama).

Then basically home via the states and Germany - with working along the way we managed to fund our ongoing travels, and things like diving and still come home with about £1000 in the pocket.

My biggest tip would be especially in Asia to learn a bit of the local language, as if you approach people on buses, etc in their native tongue you get charged a fraction of the price what the other foreigners are paying (the same in the markets, etc).

Also if you can and have time there are plenty of small charities in countries like Thailand that are crying out for help, but don't get it as they are not big internationally known organisations

mitziwaltz

Me and my husband (in our 40s) always stay at hostels on our ultra-cheap mini-breaks and are rarely the youngest ones there. You might want avoid anyplace that bills itself as "the ultimate party hostel" but otherwise it's a great way to stay cheap, safely. Most have private rooms now, which is nice if you are travelling with kids.
There are some dodgy hostels about but there are also review sites where you can find out what other people have said about places. Ignore the whining of uptight "American Express hippies" but pay attention if all or most of the comments on a place are negative or really scary stuff (crime, drug users being allowed in) is mentioned. I've never ended up in one of these places but know others who have.
BTW, the Art Hostel in Prague (former jail, "Vaclav Havel slept here"--see http://art-prison.prague-hostels.cz/) is as great as it sounds.
Right now I am SO up for a grown-up gap year...

SpudGunner

Well I have a tip.

Do it while you are young!

I am 35 and on a career break from work (I work for Barclays bank boo hiss as a Branch Manager!).

Am off for the next year which all sounds well and good, but no exotic travelling for me as I am looking after our 13 month old boy whilst my wife kindly goes back to work!

Wouldnt swap it for the world to be honest, am especially glad not to be at work at the moment as I gather a certain Martin Lewis is making working in a customer facing role for a bank particularly difficult at the moment

I couldnt have timed it better!

robonz

anyone travelling to New Zealand, a great place to find a god hostel is with BBH https://www.backpack.co.nz

JennyB

Another great option is to spend a season working in the US at a ski resort. If you approach a company like vail resorts http://www.vailresorts.com/ they will have vacancies for things like lift operators, tickets sales, ticket checking and lesson sales in resorts like Breckenridge, Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone. They arrange your visa and they have staff accommodation if you want it; it's all very straightforward. I can't remember what the pay is like or the hours but doing a season is so much fun and you meet so many great people. and your snowboarding/skiing will improve hugely!

Alternatively if you're not working then you can get a free season pass if you volunteer as a mountain guide - showing people around the mountain. This is great if you're just out there being a ski-bum but want to save on the cost of a season pass. You have to commit to something like a day a week for the season and you get to ride around the moutain all day. Plus you also do stuff like police the slow areas.

zo_hay

Camphill (est-1940) is a school for children with learning difficulties in aberdeen scotland.It was started by a group of people who escaped the horrors of world war 2 from austria with the idea of living with these children in a family setting and cater for their well being phisically, emotionally and spiritually.from that beginning there are now over one hundred camphill communities all over the world for children youngters and adults with learning difficulties . Most communities are situated in beautiful rural settings but some live in cities as well.the work is challenging but equally rewarding.you get board and lodging(all food is organic or biodynamic),pocket money , plenty of cultural life and friendly environement.joining is easy and you meet young people from all over the world who come and spend 6 month or more. Camphill web site-www.camphill.org.uk. from there you get links to virtually every country in the world.GOOD LUCK AND ENJOY.

BigBouncyBall

reviving the thread....

Kumuka travel have some good overlanders too

flowerofthewest

For those travelling independently, couchsurfing could be useful. You can contact other members of couchsurfing.com about staying with them for a few days. This means you would be staing with a local person and they are often able to tell you about the best places to go/things to do.