Welcome to Highlands2hammocks!
We are Gemma and Campbell and this is our little corner of the internet where we have spent that last 8 years of our lives helping people to plan the ultimate road trip adventure.
While the rest of our website will show you all of the amazing services we offer, products we have created, and travel blogs we have written, this is our little section to share with you the story of who we are and how Highlands2hammocks came about.
While we are so proud of everything that we have managed to achieve with this little travel blog of ours, from winning business awards to writing best-selling travel guide books, the most bizarre part of it has to be this simple fact..
None of this was planned.
Back in 2014, we were just two students trying to figure life out. We’d only been together a year and a half when we ended up on opposite sides of the world, Gemma in Australia, me in San Diego.
We met up on the Gold Coast and rented a campervan. Drove from Byron Bay to Cairns with no real plan, just figuring things out as we went.
And somewhere along that road, everything shifted.
It wasn’t just the places. It was the feeling, waking up somewhere new, not really knowing what the day would look like, but knowing it was ours. We both felt it, even if we didn’t say it out loud yet… this was the kind of life we wanted.
Of course, we had to go back to reality at some point, but when we did, we returned home with a fire in our souls.
We moved to London, started saving, and created Highlands2Hammocks. At the time, it was nothing more than a place to keep our memories and show friends and family what we were up to.
But slowly, it became something else.
People started asking questions. Asking for advice. Trusting what we had to say.
And without really realising it, we started building something.
A year later, we quit our jobs to finally set off on the round the world trip that we had been planned deep in our souls all those years ago.
We packed a tent and drove north. Backpacked around the highlands of Scotland, trailed through the hills of Ireland, and bustled along the trains of Europe. No guarantees, no backup plan, just a feeling that there had to be more than the life we were leaving behind.
We then jumped on a plane down under and Australia was where things changed properly.
We arrived in Melbourne as two broke backpackers and immediately got jobs, getting stuck in the honeytrap that is this vibrant city. However, saved what we could and then bought a campervan to escape the metropolis and travel Australia like we had always intended.
It was here that we went all in on our new passion for storytelling. Late nights working on the website, learning everything from scratch, trying to grow something we didn’t fully understand yet.
We just knew we didn’t want to stop.
Then we came home for Christmas.
And the world shut down.
We ended up in Guernsey for 18 months. Working in healthcare through COVID, long shifts, no time off, no travel. It could have been a pause… but instead, it became the moment everything took shape.
We built. Properly.
We wrote our first guidebook – Destination NC500. Grew the website. Took it seriously for the first time.
When that first NC500 book sold out, it felt different. Not just exciting, but also real. Like this thing we’d been slowly building actually had a future.
At the same time, we bought our motorhome, Ellie , and for five years, she was our home.
We travelled full-time. Wrote more books. Made more videos. Spoke at shows all across the world. Met people who changed our lives. Built something we’d once only talked about as a “maybe”.
But life doesn’t stand still.
We were only getting older and realised that we had always wanted more from life. We wanted to start a family.
And so the next chapter began.
We got married. Bought a house. And started thinking about how children might fit into this amazing adventure that we calle life.
Not everything has been easy. Some parts have been incredibly tough, and they’ve shaped us in ways we’ll always carry. But they’ve also reminded us why we started all of this in the first place.
Now, we’re stepping into a new chapter.
Still travelling. Still exploring. Just doing it as a family, and with a deeper sense of purpose behind it all.
Highlands2Hammocks has grown into something we never could have predicted.
But at its core, it’s still the same.
Two people who took a chance on a different life… and are still chasing that feeling we found on that first road trip.
Welcome to this epic adventure! We hope that you enjoy the stories as much as we do telling them.