About Me

This About Me page has filled me with dread ever since I decided to start a blog. It’s like the fear-inducing “Describe yourself in 3 words” icebreaker exercise that makes every single person in a room roll their eyes. But worse.

But stay with me here, I promise it’s not too bad.

If you don’t know me, I’m Lottie, I’m a 20-something year old from Sheffield. At uni I studied Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, and if you do know me, you’ll know that my obsession with anything remotely related to my degree is a large part of my personality.

On my Year Abroad, I had the best year of my life living in both Brazil and Spain. Since then, I’ve been itching to get back travelling as soon as possible. During my final year in 2019/2020, I fantasised about post-graduation trips to Mexico and Colombia. I had grand plans of working any old job for 6 months, then using whatever I’d saved up to go travelling for as long as the money would stretch. Easy peasy. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I’ll give you one guess.

Hint: it begins with C.

My hedonistic dream of travelling was naturally put on hold whilst society crashed and burned (typical ey). Fast forward over 2 years, society is still crashing and burning, but we can go on planes again now.

The past 2 years have meant saving, planning, and longfully looking at videos of the places I wanted to visit.

Using my original idea as inspiration, I set my sights on a trip to Mexico, Central America, and Colombia, spanning 5 months and ticking off place after place from my bucket list.

The dream trip is now finally becoming a reality, and I’ll be able to share it all with you here on the Varey Happy Traveller!


If you know me, you know I’m a bit of a try hard who doesn’t make things easy for myself. With the Varey Happy Traveller, this particular personality quirk has manifested itself as me coding this blog myself from scratch.

Yep, you read that right. Coded from scratch (a decision I have since questioned many times over).

When I’ve told various friends this fact after telling them I was making a blog, many understandably looked upon me with confusion and intrigue (I’m not exactly tech savvy).

Earlier this year, I enrolled in the Introduction to Coding course from SheCodes. That course taught me 3 basic coding languages: HTML, CSS and JS. Aka, three coding languages used on many websites, and can therefore be used to create a website (or a blog!).

As part of my final project for SheCodes, I settled on making a travel blog (which is where I first came up with the fabulous name).

To my surprise, whilst coding my final project, I realised I actually really really enjoyed it. It combined the logical side of my brain with the creative side, satisfied by seeing the immediate fruits of my labour.

The one regret of my Year Abroad was not making a blog. With this in mind, after finishing the SheCodes course, I set myself the challenge of not only writing a blog, but continuing to code it too.

So here we are, many hours (and tantrums at things not working) later, my brain child: the Varey Happy Traveller. A place to document the highs, the lows, and everything in between.

So, click the button below to get into it!