Founding members prices on all trips until 31st March
Secure your place with a £250 deposit today.
Secure your place with a £250 deposit today.
February 3, 2026
One of the great joys of retirement is the time it offers for travel. It’s often referred to as the “golden gap year”, and the description is pretty apt.
Since neither my wife nor I had ever had the opportunity to take a gap year in earlier life, we decided that now was the chance to grab ours – one adventure at a time. We’ve been fortunate enough to visit some fairly exotic places and experienced many great things - but the odd thing is that our wish list just keeps getting longer rather than shorter.
Around this time of year — New Year’s resolution season — something interesting tends to happen. We’re often asked, “So where are you going this year?” and those same people frequently follow up with suggestions that we should climb Mount Kilimanjaro, cross the Arctic, or spend three weeks backpacking through Nepal. Others suddenly decide to abandon their familiar Greek villa or Caribbean all-inclusive in favour of something wild and dramatic.
There’s nothing wrong with ambition — far from it — but the start of the year seems to spark a need to prove that you’re really making the most of life, and are fully embracing retirement.
The problem is that, just like many other New Year’s resolutions, these bold commitments often never materialise. And sometimes, when they do, they’re so uncomfortable or overwhelming that they put people off trying anything different ever again — which really is a tragedy.
Travel in retirement doesn’t need to feel like an endurance test, a box-ticking exercise, or a performance to prove to the world that there’s a “new you”.
When choosing where to travel or what to do, it’s surprisingly easy to ask the wrong question.
As we started looking at the many options for the year ahead, we realised we’d been asking ourselves:
“Where should we go this year?”
When we should be asking:
“What do we want from travel this year?”
It sounds like a subtle shift, but it completely changes how you approach the decision.
Before choosing between sun loungers and trekking poles, we set ourselves the task of answering some basic — but important — questions:
I thought that I’d share our answers, just in case they help.
What I Do Enjoy? I love seeing other cultures, taking photographs, seeing wildlife, eating local food, and exploring.
What I Don’t Enjoy? What I don’t enjoy is being in what I call a “golden cage” — hotels that could be anywhere in the world, eating international food, and only interacting with locals when they bring me a drink.
Finance
Whilst I’m certain that I’d enjoy business class flights and five-star hotels, they would severely limit how often I travel — and would keep me in a very particular bubble. So, even if I could afford this kind of travel, I wouldn’t choose it.
Health, Fitness & Durability
I’m not unfit, but I know that I need to build downtime into any trip. I also don’t want to rush from place to place — there has to be some time to “just stand and stare”.
Comfort
We’ve been lucky enough to have visited the Amazon twice: once staying in a luxury lodge, and once in backpacker accommodation. When, in the backpacker lodge, some people started falling ill, I couldn’t walk barefoot in our room and mosquitoes invaded – in vast numbers, I realised my tolerance for discomfort had changed.
I now plan my trips accordingly.
Home
I love travel — but I also love home. I don’t want to become disconnected from my family or friends, and I have responsibilities that I need to be take care of. This influences my travel plans too.
Other
Despite everything that I’ve said, I still occasionally pick out activities just to remind myself that “I’m not dead yet”: white water rafting, Velocity 2 (Europe’s longest and fastest zip wire) and climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge.
This is our time. Big dreams matter, and thinking boldly is important.
But the old adage still applies: ‘Fail to Prepare & Prepare to Fail’.
So, run your dream through that practical filter, decide what you want from the adventure - and what you are willing to give up in return.
I know that I won’t be signing up to walk 25 miles a day for three weeks of backpacking through Nepal any time soon. But if that’s what I decided to do, I’ll set my sights, build up to it and will enjoy every single step.
For me, it’s about creating great memories in a way that fits my life. Being practical and taking time to build up isn’t failure — and it isn’t procrastination. It’s realism. It’s evolution.
After all, ‘I can eat an elephant’ — but only one bite at a time.
Think big, travel well, and above all, enjoy yourself.
Safe travels,
Phil
This is an original article by Phil Marsh, DECADES’ Retiree in Residence and the writer behind Rookie Retiree.
Phil explores retirement as an opportunity for adventure, learning and reinvention, with a practical, lived perspective on life after work.
👉 Read more from Phil here.
Feeling overwhelmed by planning travel in retirement?
We’ve put together a free five-day email course that walks you through it step by step — helping you clarify what you want, pace it properly and make it manageable.
Author
