A guide to building your summer bucketlist for 2022

The best way to make sure you’re ready for the summer trip of a lifetime, discovering new places and experiencing new cultures, is to create a summer bucketlist. It’s only the start of the year but never too early to start planning your summer travel. With any luck, travel restrictions will be in our favour by summertime. There are always destinations that we would like to go to – our summer bucketlist is never-ending! This year will be no different, so we decided to give our Campspace community a handy guide to make a kick-ass summer bucketlist for the coming year. Read the blog now for our best tips!

A summer bucket list is a reliable way for nomads or van-lifers like us to achieve chosen travel goals. When you create it you can start with an overview of which destinations are feasible and top priority. This sounds easy, but when you get down to it, there are more than 190 countries in the world, more than 10,000 large cities and countless beautiful natural areas. So perhaps we can give you a hand with a few tips in creating a good travel bucket list.

Why a summer bucketlist?

You may still be wondering, is a summer bucketlist really necessary? You can also go somewhere on spec, right? By making plans you stay focused on a goal. When you have a dream, but no executable plan, it remains a dream. That’s why creating a summer bucketlist is so important. It can help you realise your ultimate travel dreams!

When you have a job, you only have a limited number of vacation days in the year. All your travel dreams can’t be realised in one holiday. With loose ideas in your head you will get lost in all those destinations. A tangible list will help you make plans concrete and make them achievable, dream by dream!

Travelling in uncertain times

Despite the fact that the corona crisis can influence travel restrictions on a weekly basis, there are still many ways to plan. Big plans for the other side of the world might have to be put on hold, but there is still so much to experience closer to home. 

You can make two summer bucketlists so you have one with destinations closer to home that you can focus on when more travel restrictions are in place  and one with distant destinations.

The pandemic period isn’t all bad for travel. Cities, countries and especially nature reserves are less crowded and clear. There are fewer people on the street but emissions have also been reduced due to fewer planes making long haul flights. 

Make a summer bucketlist step by step

We told you why a summer bucketlist is handy to have when you still have a lot of dreams. In this step-by-step guide, we're going to combine old with new. We often use a pen and paper, but we also use apps and websites to come up with the perfect summer bucket list.

Step 1: Brainstorming

We will of course start with point one and that is brainstorming. Here are three options for effective brainstorming.

1. Write down your ideas. You can write everything that comes to mind on a sheet of paper. If you’ve always wanted to spend the night on top of a mountain or sleep in a treehouse, then write it down here.

2. Think outside the box. Are you out of inspiration? Consider how someone else you know might approach the situation. It can help to take a look at travel bloggers or magazines to come up with the best ideas.

3. Brainstorm with a deadline. When you are under time pressure, you often perform better. So it’s smart to give yourself a maximum time so ideas will surface faster.

There are of course many more techniques for brainstorming. Choose one that feels good and suits you.

Step 2: Inspiration

Now it's time to get new inspiration. Because you use social media or sometimes watch YouTube, you’re unconsciously being inspired and adding more knowledge to your arsenal. To give you even more inspiration, we’ve listed a number of useful tips for your summer bucketlist here:

Apps:

Want an app to help you build a summer bucket list? There are apps like Soon and IWish that can help you put together your summer bucketlist.

Social media channels:

A nice social media channel to follow is, for example, @Traveltomtom. Tom is from the Netherlands and has been travelling since 2012. His goal is to travel all over the world. He keeps track of everything via his Instagram account. To find inspiration and information about travelling in Europe in the most sustainable way possible: follow us at @simply.nomads.

YouTube:

If you prefer to see some inspiration videos, the Vagabrothers have a very nice account. They travel all over the world and make beautiful videos about it. Yes Theory is also a great channel to get ideas. Here they say "YES" to all adventures and thus end up in the most bizarre places in the world.

There are many more ways to get ideas for your summer bucket list. Think of books, films, series and documentaries. Stories from friends or family may also send you to a beautiful place on this earth.

Step 3: Follow your heart

Now it's time for the last and most important part of creating a summer bucketlist. That is: following your heart. Chasing your own dreams is what makes this bucketlist special.

That is why we sometimes allow ourselves to be guided by feeling at that moment. Sometimes you don't just have to cross everything off your travel bucketlist. Sometimes a good idea pops up and we just go for it. That way we experience things that we couldn’t have possibly planned. It is precisely those unexpected get-togethers with locals or spontaneous ideas that make your trip unique.

Step 4: Keep your summer bucketlist small

Earlier in this guide we mentioned that you shouldn't make your list too big. If you make plans too ambitious, there's a chance they'll never come true. So also plan ideas such as: sleeping in the open air, going on a multi-day hike, staying overnight in a yurt, taking a road trip through Europe or drinking a cup of coffee in the most northern or southern part of the Netherlands.

By keeping it small you’ll be able to check more and more off that bucketlist. Campspace is an ideal starting point to start a journey. Take a look at all the unique possibilities they have to stay overnight somewhere special and authentic. From there you might be able to cross off another bucketlist item. Canoeing, bungee jumping or sailing across the IJsselmeer. Keep it small, keep it close and you’ll be doing not only yourself but the environment a favour!

Summer bucketlist with the campervan

We have a motorhome ourselves, so we always make sure that our destinations are within reach. This also has to do with the fact that we work online and it is therefore pleasant to stay within Europe. But if you have all the freedom, you can of course drive all the way to Hong Kong or Japan with your campervan if you want. It is good to have a few things in order for such a trip. Think of parts for your motorhome, but also the right insurance for when you break down in the middle of Mongolia.

We also have the dream on our travel bucket list to one day drive a camper through Turkey, Iran and Pakistan to India and Nepal. The old hippie trail.

Travel more and live with less

We are Rick & Laura and have been travelling since November 2019. We are currently doing this in a motorhome and our motto is: live more, with less. For Campspace we write a blog every two weeks about our camper life and we give great tips about sustainable travel. Do you have sustainable tips for us or are you curious about our account? Then take a look at www.simply-nomads.nl