When and why did you join the Guild?

I joined the guild in May 2010, to help build my career as a travel writer. I felt that the Guild would be a good place to meet people with both similar and more experience than myself, to network, to find professional support and to spend time with like-minded people.

What are you working on at the moment? Any future plans?

Writing mostly for inflight magazines at the moment, but I’m working on a book idea.

What's your earliest memory of travel?

I was five and we went to the Bay of Islands (I was born in Auckland, New Zealand) for Christmas. It was the year I discovered that Santa didn’t exist, because I saw my parents bundling the presents into the back of the car, but on the flipside, we spent a lot of time at the beach and my mum taught me to swim.

What's your most bizarre memory of travel?

Sitting on a Ryanair flight for two hours next to Ralph Fiennes. I was travelling to Italy on commission, so I was sitting there focusing on the work ahead, and then one of my all-time favourite actors sat next to me. We chatted for a while and I got my photo taken with him and then I had to stop buzzing out and try to think about my destination again and the interviews and research I had to do. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it all weekend. It was quite surreal.

What’s your favourite travel memory?

Two spring to mind. Sitting in the open window of a traditional farmhouse in a village in Kosovo, at dusk, watching fireflies in the garden and enjoying the peace and tranquillity. And sitting in a mud-brick kitchen on Amantani Island in Peru peeling little purple potatoes to go into my host’s quinoa soup, listening to her daughter sing a Quechua song and enjoying the smell of dinner cooking.

Which is the place you haven't been to yet but would most like to visit?

Papua New Guinea. It seems like the most fascinating place, with such remote cultural groups and extraordinary wildlife. A real off-the-beaten-track wilderness.

Where would you never want to go again?

Bulgaria. Specifically Bansko ski resort. The snowboarding was great, but the resort was a construction site and the people were fairly unpleasant (with a few exceptions).

If you could take a day trip back in time to any point in history, when and where would you visit?

The court of Marie Antoinette at Versailles in France. Wearing the clothes, hearing the gossip, seeing what Marie Antoinette actually looked like, and escaping to the Petit Trianon for a pastiche of a French country idyll. Of course the “when” would be several years before the revolution!

How did you get involved in travel writing?

First I wanted to be Indiana Jones, so I did an Egyptology degree. Then I realised that Indiana Joneses don’t really exist, and I didn’t want to spend most of my time cooped up in an office or library, teaching and researching. So I did journalism with the aim of one day working for National Geographic. Several design and lifestyle magazines later I went freelance and gravitated towards travel titles. Then switched to travel writing and editing full time.

Favourite museum or gallery?

The Cairo Museum. It’s a bit of a jumble, but having studied Egyptology, it was a huge thrill to go there and see the things and people I had studied, especially the mummies of iconic pharaohs who had seemed so important, and there they were, just stacked one above the other in the mummy room.

Most memorable hotel?

Evason Six Senses Spa in Phuket. Spent a heavenly week there and it was the most relaxing time I have ever had on holiday.

Which travel destination has taken you most by surprise and why?

The Costa del Sol. I went there on commission, and was convinced I would hate the place. But I was pleasantly surprised at how you could still find traditional bodegas, how it felt like another world visiting the white villages up in the hills, and how you could very quickly find yourself off the beaten track just inland from the resorts.

A favourite travel book to pass the journey?

There are several, but I’m reading Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush at the moment and I keep thinking I’ve seen the scenes in a film – his writing is so visual. I also love Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines, especially the chapters where he writes about writing. And I think Terry Darlington’s Narrow Dog to Indian River is hilarious and clever – as much for the characterisation of his long-suffering whippet as for the descriptions of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.