'Follow Your Joy': Glasgow woman who visited 90 countries releases travel memoir

Jacquelyn Armour, 39, has spent periods living abroad, embarked on monthslong solo trips, and used every moment off work to visit as much of the world as possible. 

Now, she is sharing her experience of travelling to inspire people to ‘follow their joy’ and make the most of their time after the pandemic.

Jacquelyn said: “People ask me 'how did you get to 90 countries?' I just really never stopped myself. Once you remove all the boundaries and barriers in your head that keep you stuck, you just literally follow joy and for me that’s travelling. 

“We all think tomorrow is guaranteed but what the pandemic taught us is that things can change very quickly. During lockdown, I thought ‘if I can't travel, I may write about it’, in an attempt to help nudge people, not even necessarily to travel, but just to do something they enjoy.”

“The book is about escapism and it's quite light-hearted. With 2022 around the corner, it’s the perfect read for winter time to hopefully inspire people to just go out, have an experience and a bit of adventure. It's just for people to realise, only we hold ourselves back.”

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A self-defined “modern day traveller”, Jacquelyn kicked off her life-long travels with a family holiday in Spain at the age of eight.

She said: “I remember my family and I going on holiday to this place called 'abroad'. I later found out this was Spain, but as a kid, it was the unknown because, up until that point, we had only holidayed in Blackpool. 

“I think from there something ignited within me. Every day was different, it just felt like an adventure.”

After university, Jacquelyn, originally from Kilmarnock, moved to the US for a working holiday summer, and she never looked back. 

A 10-year long relationship then took her to Melbourne, which acted as a gateway to New Zealand and Asia. 

After returning to Scotland in 2015, Jacquelyn’s trips have been planned mainly around her job as a business analyst. 

A long weekend might see her jump on a plane to visit a couple of European countries, she managed to fit Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Finland in a 10-day itinerary, and only took a four-months break to tour Central and South America. 

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In 2020, after visiting San Marino, a microstate land-locked by Italy, she decided to tell her travel stories in a book. 

Follow Your Joy is a collection of ten chapters, each dedicated to a different country, where the author shares what she learned along the way.

For Jacquelyn, in fact, travelling is not just about ticking another place off the list: “In the chapter about Myanmar, for example, I talk about how travelling in my 20s versus my 30s has been quite different,” she said. “Initially, it was very backpacking-focused and a bit of a roller coaster, as in you never really knew what you were doing. 

“Whereas, as I got older, I wouldn't just go to a country for the sake of it, but because I knew I wanted to experience something.”

While Jacquelyn treasures all her trips, a hiking trip to Nepal in 2018 stands out in her memory.

“For the whole time I was offline, no Wi-Fi, no outside distractions,” she said. “It's just something that we can't really do in our day-to-day lives, we're always connected and distracted. All I had to do there was wake up, breakfast, hike, lunch, hike... It felt a little bit weird to begin with, but I felt free and in the end I didn’t want to leave.”

She added: “I feel like I gained so much from travelling and whenever I am looking back on a trip I feel like there's so much I want to share. So I wanted to package this up and explain what it gave me, and hopefully, it will transmit a sense of joy to readers.”

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Jacquelyn’s book launched on October 5. She shares her travel updates and tips on her Instagram, followyourjoy_ja, and on her blog, Follow Your Joy.