About Laura
Hi, I'm Laura, long known to friends as 'Laur on Tour'. My lovely, late friend Andrew gave me this nickname back in 2009 due to the fact I always seemed to be on a train or plane somewhere. In reality, I had only been travelling abroad for three years at that point in my life with my first foreign holiday being Marmaris, Turkey, in August 2006.
At the time of writing (July 2026), I have visited 32 countries, returning to many of them several times. In fact, I am due to visit two new countries next week which will bring the standing total to 34!
I lived in Spain for 3-and-a-half years and got to know Italy very well when I spent another 3-and-a-half years in a relationship with an Italian man. I speak Spanish, Italian, and French.
By day, I am a full-time secondary school teacher who aims to travel somewhere in every school holiday and bank holiday, and by night I am a poet and writer who performs at events across Liverpool and beyond.
You can read some of my poems and view photos of performances over at my poetry blog.
About the Laur on Tour travel blog
I have been blogging about my travels since 2018 when I was living in Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain.
I hosted the blog at my personal domain of www.lauraferries.com then decided to migrate it to a specific Laur on Tour domain in 2026.
In 2024, I began creating a series of holiday language guides that people can take away with them on holiday with simple, essential words and phrases needed to get by with none of the fuss and complexity of grammar and rules.
'Sol Spanish' and 'Isola Italian' were the first to be published as downloadable PDFs, and are now in the process of being published as paperbacks, small enough to slip in your handbag while out and about on your travels!
Some travel anecdotes
- On my first holiday abroad to Marmaris in 2006 when I was 18, I narrowly avoided dining in a pizza restaurant where one of three b*mb attacks would take place an hour or two later as someone in our group didn't like the menu and asked if we could change restaurants after we had been seated and were about to order.
- I was nearly arrested in Budapest when I was 19 as I had not understood the metro ticket options and had either unwittingly purchased a single and used it again thinking it was a return, or hadn't validated it before travel. The inspector radioed through for police until another inspector with more sympathy could see I hadn't meant it and was panicking.
- A group of friends and I arrived at Alicante airport in April 2015 after five days in Benidorm when the entire departures board switched from gate numbers to cancelled (there was a French airstrike). EasyJet paid for our return flights five days later, hotel accommodation, and all food and soft drink expenses.
- (More to be added)
20 years of travelling abroad and (hopefully) counting!
(Photo on the left by @glamgigpics on Instagram)
'As a woman I have no country.
As a woman my country is the whole world.'
Virginia Woolf