Long-distance hiking, and house-sitting when she’s not hiking, is how New Zealand-born Australian Belinda Coker redefined and reimagined life after 50. A global “gray nomad,” she describes a near-death experience in the Canary Islands, Europe’s hut-to-hut culture, New Zealand’s trails, and the sheer delights of house-sitting.
Belinda Coker (SoulTreader.com), a New Zealand-born Australian currently based in the UK, redefined her life through hiking and travel. Her mission is to get women over 50 outdoors and into the wilderness.
Belinda recounts early solo overland travel through Southeast Asia and India, volunteering on a solar power project in Ladakh, later working in Japan, and eventually entering corporate life and raising three children.
During the 2020 pandemic she realized she’d lost her adventurous self, bought hiking boots, joined a Meetup hike with very fit older hikers, and committed to maintaining health and adventure while advocating for trail safety, proper gear, and group hiking.
She describes a recent near-hypothermia incident on the Canary Islands GR131 when unexpected cold rain and cloud cover forced an emergency exit. She also discusses Europe’s hut-to-hut culture versus wild camping, New Zealand’s extensive trails and huts, and her post-corporate house-sitting work via The House Sitting Collective, including a listener discount code HSTRAVEL.
00:00 Moving Along - ep. 36 - Belinda Coker
00:21 Introduction to Belinda Coker
03:08 The Big OE - Overseas Experience - from Tauranga, New Zealand
06:07 India and Volunteering on the Solar Power Project in Ladakh
06:50 From India Home to Australia
08:04 Look in the Mirror
09:37 One Hike Was All It Took
11:25 Hiking: Where to Start
13:24 Buying Your First Pair of Hiking Boots
14:46 Near-Death Experience in the Canary Islands
21:10 Free Resource about Safety for Hikers
22:05 Hut-to-Hut, Inn-to-Inn Hiking
23:43 Hut Culture
25:06 Getting into the Wilderness for Women
27:13 House-Sitting
31:56 Benefits of House-Sitting
34:36 The House Sitting Collective - Special Promo Code for Listeners
Contact Belinda Coker:
Soul Treader – Belinda’s website
https://soultreader.com/hike-it-right/
(Hike It Right. - Free Resource - 78 Pages of Health, Safety & Hygiene on the Trail)
The House Sitting Collective
https://housesittingcollective.com/
Discount Code for 10% off all House Sitting Courses - HSTRAVEL
Belinda: [00:00:00] it's tenting and you do need to be quite hardcore with that. And Europeans just don't, they, they don't back country camp. They just, they, it's just, they just don't do it. They, they go to huts and they, and they have their wine and their three course meals and it's just so different.
Christi: Welcome to Moving Along. My guest today is [00:01:00] Belinda Coker, who is talking to us from the UK at a friend's cottage. It looks very, pretty and cozy, she was actually in the Canary Islands and had to stop her long distance hike and she'll tell us a little bit about what happened there. I wanted to talk to Belinda today because at a certain point in her life, she looked at herself in the mirror and decided that she was going to do something different. It was a life changing moment, her children, her three children were pretty much. Almost on their way out the door. And she just thought, this is not going to be my life.
I'm going to change. And she did. And she has made it her mission to get women over 50 outdoors out on the trail and walking. Her website is called [00:02:00] Soul T-R-E-A-D-E-R. T-R-E-A-D-E-R. So it's S-O-U-L-T-R-E-A-D-E r.com. And she's got wonderful pictures and travel logs and really important basic information, especially for women who want to travel. She left her home in Australia where she grew up at 21, traveled alone over land through Asia and India. She settled in Ladakh a union territory as opposed to a state in India, near Tibet and Pakistan, where she volunteered on a solar power project.
Pretty cool, huh? Then back to Australia, into the business world. Belinda went for a couple of decades raising those three children, and then another life transition. [00:03:00] And that's, we're going to talk a lot about that today. but first, welcome, Belinda.
Belinda: Thank you, Christi. It's lovely to be here.
Christi: Oh, it's lovely to see you, and lovely to have you here. You say you're an Aussie, born in New Zealand and, you grew up in Tauranga, New Zealand.
Belinda: Yeah.
Christi: What did travel and moving mean to you as a child?
Belinda: Okay, well, new Zealand's quite a funny country because it's all the way down in the South Pacific and it seems like it's so far away from everywhere, and almost everybody, we call it our big OE So you, everyone kind of, not everybody, but I would say a huge percentage of kids have what's known as a big OE
Which is Overseas Experience. So, and lots of people either leave after high school for a couple of years and then they come back and they, go to university or they do the university and then they go, they go out. So kind of like a [00:04:00] gap year type of thing.
so it was kind of expected I expected that I would leave home and, with a backpack on my back and, off I go. And most of my friends went to either Europe or they went to Southeast Asia. More people kind of went to Europe because we are allowed a two year working visa in the UK being part of the Commonwealth. And so that was, that was fairly normal. You know, there's whole there's whole, and this is, this is goes for Australia and New Zealand, so there's whole areas in in London that were sort of Aussie and Kiwi, sort of big Aussie and kiwi share houses and all that sort of thing.
So we're talking about 40 years ago now. it was loads and loads of fun. But before I actually got there, I decided to go to Southeast Asia. I had a friend who I was flicking through his photos and I was seeing all these wonderful images of, you know, actual photos, his adventures in Southeast Asia.
[00:05:00] So off I trotted and I, and I flew into Bali. And I traveled up through Indonesia, through Thailand, and if any of any of your listeners have been to Thailand you know, the islands of Khao Phing Kan are just renowned for their full moon parties. I think I went to the very second full moon party on Khao Phing Kan.
and there were only two small resorts, and they weren't resorts on Khao Phing Kan. They were literally bamboo huts on the beach. And so, you know, we're talking about a Southeast Asia that was literally so cheap and so much fun and so wild and so raw, now these, a lot of these Southeast Asian countries they're powerhouses for innovation and all sorts of things, you know call centers and, but back then they really were raw. They were, they were so much fun. They were, they were a playground and you felt quite safe actually. even though, Thailand at that point still had what was known then [00:06:00] as the Golden Triangle, and we knew that that was kind of like a danger area, but, yes. So that that was kind of my foray.
Belinda: And then from Thailand I got a flight to India and spent quite a long time in India. and that was when I ended up, I traveled up to Ladakh and I met somebody and found a, a little voluntary position where I got accommodation and food for work in a voluntary capacity on a solar power project.
At the time, I had no idea what solar power was. I don't think anybody did 40 years ago. as Ladakh is right up on the Tibetan plateau, it was just a perfect sort of it was a new sort of scheme that the government was funding and to my knowledge it still exists today.
Yeah. And that, that was my foray into traveling.
Christi: But you decided to go back to Australia.
Belinda: Yes. So I actually went back to Australia after my travels and and that's [00:07:00] where I went and did my, adult education, you know, my formal education after high school and Australia and New Zealand back then. there was no problem about people sort of staying and working and there's still to this day isn't Australians and New Zealanders can move between the two countries quite easily.
and then I went back out again and went and taught English in Japan, and that is when I met my children's father. Yes.
Christi: Ah,
Belinda: Hmm. Yeah.
Christi: okay.
Belinda: Yeah.
Christi: I didn't know about the Japan piece.
Belinda: Yes, I know. And that was great. And after Japan, we went on a surfing safari around places like Sri Lanka and then, and then around Europe. So that was my introduction to Europe. hmm.
Christi: had your husband been there before?
Belinda: Yes, yes. He was Welsh
Christi: Ah,
Belinda: still, still is Welsh actually.
Christi: He still is Welsh.
Belinda: Yes.
Christi: Got it.
Belinda: Yeah.
Christi: where did you [00:08:00] land in Australia when you came home?
Belinda: Sydney.
Christi: Sydney so what happened that day when you looked in the mirror and said. Oh my God, what the hell happened?
Belinda: Yeah. So I'd always done a lot of solo travel. I'd always been adventurous and throughout my corporate life, I'd also done a lot of corporate travel. staying in nice five star hotels traveling in the pointy part of the plane.
And then I was, I think it was two, the year 2020. So it was kind of like pandemic year, and that's when everybody, a lot of people got the chance to have a good look at what's really important to them and have a good look at themselves as well. it gave everyone a a great chance to reflect.
And I remember looking in the mirror and I was probably quite overweight. I was, reaching for comfort food, reaching for that glass of wine, you know, for stress and all that sort of thing. I was working, I was, you know, a [00:09:00]mother of three two teenagers and my son who is an a young adult.
And I just looked in the mirror and I thought, my gosh, where has that girl gone? Like, I almost felt like I had lost myself. I felt like yes, I was, you know, going out to dinner. I was meeting friends for dinner. I was, you know, I still relatively active, but it was, you know, I just, I, I felt like I I was yearning for something else and that was the day that I went out and bought a pair of hiking boots.
Belinda: And I hadn't had a pair of hiking boots since since I had left New Zealand. New Zealand, by the way. Just a, a side note here, has 10,000 hiking trails it's just, it's just a hiking mecca. so I hadn't owned a, a pair of hiking boots since then. So I, I, you know, off, I trotted down to the store and, picked up a pair of hiking boots.
And then I joined a Meetup group for hiking. And, and I remember [00:10:00] turning up there and I was the youngest. Everybody else was in their seventies and eighties, and they were so fit and so healthy, and they had this wonderful glow about them. And I can remember thinking, oh my gosh, I wanna be like these people.
The trail was about 17 kilometers, which I think's about 12 miles. So it wasn't a long trail, but there. Quite a hefty, you know, descent and then ascent back up. And I can remember I was huffing and puffing and sweating you know, I was the kid on the sidelines in the, playing field, let the, you know, wasn't allowed on the team.
You know, that's what I kind of felt like. And these sprightly 70 and 80 year olds were, you know, they were killing it. And I just thought, oh my gosh, I want to be that. I am 55 now and it's not going to be, I probably have about. 30 more years of being, active, active, active, [00:11:00] you know, and I think pegging it in about 85 and so it was that moment that I thought you either, keep it or you lose it.
And that was when I decided that I really, I really wanted to keep my health and keep my fitness up. and I wanted my adventure back as well. it was so important to me. I just realized how important it was just on that one hike, that that was all it took.
Christi: Is that the kind of thing you would recommend for somebody who is thinking, wow, I'd love to do this. but where do I start?
Belinda: I really do think that if you are going to take on hiking and you, you've never done it before, I think it is important to start going off with other people first. I'm a health and safety advocate now for the trail. And you know, one of the first things I did when I started to really get into it was do a wilderness First Aid course.
And so much can go wrong on a hike. And the problem with Instagram now is it shows all these amazing [00:12:00] trails and, people doing this and standing on the top of mountains and on rock faces and all sorts of things. It sort of gives people this, concept that it's just like riding a bike or it's just like playing a, a round of golf or something like that.
But so much can and does go wrong and we can go into that soon because I can tell you about my latest experience and you know, in terms of weather, in terms of injury, all sorts of things. Heat and cold illnesses and I don't say that to sort of put people off.
I say that to people to be aware, and it really is important to, you know, if you are starting off, going on a hike to maybe join a group. And Meetup's always great or Facebook, your local hiking groups on Facebook and the hiking community is a great community, is so supportive.
They really don't care if you've got six legs or if you've got two. They really don't care. as long as you're turning up there's kind of like a golden rule when you're hiking in a [00:13:00] group, that you always go as fast as the slowest hiker.
And you'll find that when you do join these groups, it's okay. It doesn't matter if you are unfit or overweight or whatever. Just as long as you do something that is within your ability Most hikes they'll have some sort of gauge about how difficult the hike is. Easy, moderate very difficult. it's different grading systems for every country,
Christi: How about those boots? Like you went on that Meetup with the senior seniors? hiking in, brand new boots.
Belinda: I did go in brand new boots. Yes. And I always say to people, don't do them. I actually got my boots fitted perfectly, so I went to a really a, a a great store. I didn't buy them online. I didn't walk into a nearest shoe shop and try, a pair of boots on myself and say, oh, these fit well, and just sort of, you know, walk out.
I actually got someone to help me choose my first pair of boots. He actually made me, wear them in the, in the store. They had this [00:14:00] little stairs and they had this up and down so you could sort of, Walk around for half an hour.
And it was all carpeted I was actually quite lucky because I've got funky feet. I've got very, very, very wide feet, but I, I kind of wear trail runners now and I know what pair suit me best and I know that I can order them online and put them on straight away and wear them.
But I do not recommend that for anybody who is taken off and hiking for the first time. Really, you do need to wear your boots for a while and just make sure that they're not going to kill you out on the trail.
Christi: You have a great little article about blisters
Belinda: Oh, yeah. Oh, you read that one?
Christi: I read a few of them I wanna read all the rest of them.
Christi: Tell me, tell me what happened to you in the Canary Island.
Belinda: Okay, so the Canary Islands are an autonomous group of islands technically owned by Spain. And so there's seven of them, and they're off the coast of Western [00:15:00] Sahara. So they're very close to Western Sahara. They're absolutely gorgeous. They're all little, like, they're all actually mini volcanoes.
And and they've all got a little, you know, bit of cloud hanging on top of them, you know, like a little hat. So when I got to island number three, so I just backtrack for a minute. I was doing what's known as the GR 1 31, which is a route 500 kilometer, 350 mile route that traverses all seven islands.
And I was up to island number three And I got up to 1600 meters, which wasn't, you know, it was my, first day on this particular trail 1600 meters. It's, you know, it's, it's pretty hefty climb, but it's not overly it's not excessive.
So I might have been a little bit dehydrated, just a normal dehydration, not overly dehydrated. and I got into cloud and I had had cloud cover on the peak of the past two islands. So I wasn't overly concerned about it. I had a rain [00:16:00] jacket on and I put the rain jacket on and and then I was trying to sort of get to where I knew that there was somewhere where I could camp and a shelter.
And it, it didn't take long before that cloud actually turned into rain. And not only rain, but extremely cold rain. So the weather forecast had shown sun, hot sun, bright sun, no cloud whatsoever. And I walked into this cloud and it was, and it was wet. It started to rain quite heavy and constant rain.
And I ended up getting absolutely saturated. And then I felt the temperature plummet and it plummeted. It plummeted about 10 degrees Celsius. So it went down to 35 Fahrenheit, so two degrees Celsius. And I could feel myself start to shiver violently around my core
And I knew that I was in danger. I knew that that was a huge danger [00:17:00]sign. When you're in cloud cover, your electronics do not work. they fire up, but you can't your touch screen is not dry enough for you to sort of, you know, manipulate the the front of the, the screen of your phone.
So, but I actually managed to get a map up cause I knew that there was a a road fairly close. 'cause I always sort of try and make sure I know where my exit points are and where there's water. No, I did not have a paper map. And yes, I say in all of my, in, all of my trail guides, it's so important to take a compass and a trail map.
You know, your electronics might fail and I just didn't have a paper map. I just did not expect this. So I knew that there was a road, it wasn't very far. It was about five, it was about half a kilometer, so it wasn't very far at all, but it was overland. And it's probably about a third of a mile.
And so I kind of made my way [00:18:00] to the road and that. Was pretty scary because I knew that I was in cloud cover. I had a garment in reach mini, I could have called for push the SOS button, but I wasn't confident in the Canary Islands search and rescue. I knew that I probably probably didn't have that long before I go into full, full blown hypothermia. And I knew that once that happened it would be, it would be all over Red Rover. So I I, I started to move overland and. Even that's danger in itself because when you are wet and cold, you're losing heat probably four times faster than your body can produce it.
But I knew it it wasn't that far and I knew I had to, and I just had the survival instinct just just get in me. And I got to the road and I stuck out my thumb and cars were going past me and a couple of cars were going past me. 'cause it the, the Canary Islands are quite remote.
And then this car stopped and this lovely young French couple picked me up and took me [00:19:00] down to the nearest town. So, yes, so that was, that happened five days ago. And I also experienced a broken tent on that, hike. It was just the whole hike was fraught, fraught with danger with problems.
that was when I just called it, I just thought, I need to get back into four walls carpet and and a nice fire. But I have actually been hiking since in November, beginning of November. So this has been a very long hiking season for me, and I was kind of looking forward to some creature comforts.
Christi: Right, and we're recording this on January 23rd, 2026. Did they take you to the hospital or did they take you to an inn?
Belinda: so I went to a hotel and I knew what to do. I actually got outta my wet clothes in the back of their car, they were European. They've, been in the Alps.
They, they sort of knew, I just knew I just had to get my wet clothes off, got my wet clothes off, and put my dry clothes on. And then, and [00:20:00] then tried and, and got my body back up to heat slowly and consistently. And that was a way that, a way to do it. And wrapped myself in my Mylar blanket, your thin emergency blanket and, and did that.
And then got some electrolytes into me kept my fluids up, hot drink and and I didn't go into the hot shower. I waited until the next day to get into the hot shower.
Christi: Was that one of the scariest situations you've ever been in
Belinda: It was, and it was a huge wake up call. It really was a huge wake up call because I've hiked and when it's been cold before, I mean, I've done you know, I've hiked in Greenland, last year I hiked in Sweden as well right up to the Arctic Circle. So, I'm used to hiking in cold and wet conditions.
But I really wasn't expecting this. And and I wasn't prepared for it. And it came as a huge shock at how quickly the temperature dropped and how quickly that onset of hypothermia [00:21:00] actually hit me. It really, it, it still to this day I mean, it was only five days ago. Yeah.
It's still, it shocks me. It shocks me. You know how easily that can happen.
Christi: You have a free resource on your website, which is, I'll say it again. So Tread, S-O-U-L-T-R-E-A-D-E r.com, And it's called Hike It Right? Health, Safety and Hygiene on the Trail.
Belinda: Yeah. Yeah. And I actually go into hypothermia, hhy hypothermia, and also it's cousin hyperthermia, which is a heat, related illness. And actually more people die from hyperthermia than hypothermia. Hypotherm. Hypothermia is when you get cold, hyperthermia is when your body gets too hot and it can't regulate itself and cool down.
And I think there are more deaths in the USA with hyperthermia per year [00:22:00] than anything else. Sorry. In the wilderness, that's the number one cause of death in the USA.
Christi: When we were talking earlier, you said and I think there's something on your website about this too, that. You like to go inn to, inn or hut to hut, and this is something that we don't tend to do in the US.
Belinda: No.
Christi: So talk a little bit about that. what's that like?
Belinda: In lots of European countries what they call it, wild camping
So we might call it in America, you might call it back country camping or disperse camping You know, they call it wild camping and it's actually illegal in a lot of countries. People do do it, but it's, it is kind of illegal and it's actually frowned upon in a lot of places. I've, I actually, I say that, but Scandinavia all of Sweden, Norway, and Finland, it's widely accepted.
So, and Scotland's widely accepted as well. So there's this few pockets in Europe where it's widely accepted, but everywhere else multi-day hiking is firmly established with a hut system. And the huts [00:23:00] can be quite grandiose. You know, they're quite gorgeous. They're perched in, in the Alps, you know, with amazing outlook. Balconies and, you know beautiful meals. Three course meals with wine, all sorts of things and be, so people kind of go on these multi-day hikes and there's a real hut culture. So so that's with Europe, but there's also a lot of end-to-end hikes.
So a very famous end-to-end hike would be the West Highland Way in Scotland or the Fisherman's Trail in Portugal. And there's, and there's a couple of hikes that I've kind of got my eye on, which is the Rheinsteig, which goes down one side of the Rhine and up there and up the other.
So, you know, do a bit of wine, wine tasting on your way.
Belinda: So New Zealand has got a huge culture and it's, and I've got loads of articles about hiking in New Zealand on my site. There New Zealand has 10,000 hiking trails and 900 government huts. The huts don't provide meals, [00:24:00] but they are very, very cheap.
They're probably, I think they're about $25 a night, which is 25 New Zealand dollars, which is about, I don't know, about 17 us, something like that. they're cheap and, and some of them are free as well. You have the great walks where they're quite, they're a little bit more expensive, but the Great Walks they're dedicated great walks and they're sort of considered like the jewel of New Zealand hiking. But in my opinion, there's a lot of secondary hikes, which are just as good, if not better. And so hut-to-hut hiking basically means that you don't have to carry a tent, you don't have to carry your sleeping bag.
We, you do for New Zealand huts you don't have to carry if you're hiking in Europe, you don't have to carry your food. You literally are carrying your clothes and your toothbrush and that's it. Yeah.
Christi: And do you, how does that work? Do you book ahead
Belinda: Yeah, lots of them. You do have to book ahead and we will be doing quite a few of them [00:25:00] this summer we'll be doing the Tour de Mont Blanc alpine hikes and yes, you do have to book in advance.
Christi: What is it about getting into the wilderness, not just getting outdoors, but getting into the wilderness that you feel is different or makes a difference for women in particular as they are feigning their confidence.
Belinda: Look, I actually feel safer in the wilderness than I do in a city. If I'm walking around, you know, say I'm walking around at nighttime no, obviously I don't walk around the wilderness at nighttime. That can has its own set of dangers. But I, I kind of feel that, you know, if there's anyone is who is going to do another human harm, they're more likely to be in the city than they are out in the wilderness.
And yes, you can, you know, meet a wild animal or animal in its natural habitat. you can succumb to heat or cold related illnesses [00:26:00] or you can have difficulty finding water and you can dehydrate, or you can stumble and break your ankle. Okay? So lots of things can go wrong in the wilderness.
Of course it can. But also lots of things can go wrong in the city as well. And I just feel that at least when you're in the wilderness, you have this for me, I have this sense of calm, the, a sense of serenity that I don't have when I'm in the city. And that for me is just, that's what makes it so important for me to be out in the wilderness.
So, so when I was hiking in Greenland there are no trees along the Arctic Circle, and because it's usually a snow covered country. And so the Arctic Circle Trail runs from the edge of the ice cap all the way to the sea. And it's absolutely stunning.
It is just beautiful. It's just one of my favorite hikes ever. it was, was so quiet.
And I realized there are no trees. There are [00:27:00] no trees. So there there's no wind rusting through leaves. There's no bird song. There's nothing, there's no little chipmunks running around the place. Yeah. It was a really, it was really quite fascinating. I loved it.
Christi: Well. I just wanted to ask you about house-sitting, and this is another piece of your post corporate life how did house-sitting arise? Was this this like an organic thing? Like why not house-sit
Belinda: It actually started when I was in the UK. my daughter was over here doing an exchange with her university, and I came. Over. Like most antipodeans, we've got a zillion friends up and down the country in, in the UK I was looking for somewhere to use as a base. And so I was looking at Airbnbs and I was looking@countrycottages.com and you know, when you, when you walk into an Airbnb, it really is, you literally have a saucepan, spent [00:28:00] a frying pan. You'll be lucky if you've got a sharp knife. I mean, they're not as I think what Airbnb started off as is not what it is now.
And I was looking at some of these places and I was going, oh my God, it just looks so drab. you know, it can be quite expensive too when you're talking about, you know, looking at somewhere for a month or two at a time. You know, when Facebook and Instagram, you know how they can, they can hear you, you know, when you're talking about anything.
And they, and up pop pops and advertisement, well now they, they can actually listen to your thoughts. So I was kind of thinking, I was kind of thinking, okay, so what am I going to do? And then suddenly bing on my Facebook feed came something about house-sitting. I thought that looks interesting.
So, so I explored it and I ended up staying in this lovely mansion in Exeter on the seaside and looking after a Siamese cat. It was a doctor's mansion. It [00:29:00] was absolutely gorgeous. And I can just remember walking into a kitchen and you have an air fryer, you have an, you have a slow cooker.
You have all the things that you need in the kitchen to cook. And I had a dining table that I could sit down or a workspace, you know, a, office space somewhere where I could work from. And it just made sense to me. It makes sense because one, it's free. You are staying somewhere. Even if you're on holiday or extended nomadic, you know, gray nomad lifestyle as I am having but you don't actually need to pay for accommodation and you don't need to pay for expensive restaurant meals as well. And this is especially good for anybody who has diet restrictions because even if you are vegan a vegan meal if you're cooking it yourself will probably cost a few dollars. If you go to a vegan restaurant, they cost a fortune because, you know, they're special. Eating out now can be extremely [00:30:00] expensive, and the other good thing about it is that, You can have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, and you don't have to negotiate your way back to the hotel, whether it's by taxi or walking along the street or anything like that.
You literally just need to move to the lounge and settle down in front of the fire and, you know, get a cat to jump on your lap So it just makes sense to me in so many ways. And so now I spend probably about half of the year hiking even more about, you know, seven, eight months of the year hiking and the other four months I spend house-sitting This is a prime example of how great it is. So I got off the hike in Canary Islands. I still had another 20 days to go, and I was going to have a little bit of a holiday after that.
So I arrived back in here in the UK. Within two days, I'd secured a month of a month house, sit in the lovely in the lovely Norfolk coast, looking [00:31:00] after a lovely dog. And yes, in a beautiful home and for a lovely couple. So my accommodation for the next month is sorted.
And and I don't have to worry about that. You don't have to worry about security. You don't have to worry about so many issues when it comes to travel. And I find when you are traveling you know, things can get, not only can costs add up, but also it can be quite stressful. Like, where are we going to go for dinner?
All these sorts of things can come into play and, with house-sitting. You are, going into somebody's home. You are going into a culture. For example we house sat in Spain. We went to Barcelona and then Andalusia and we went to the local Mercat to buy our groceries. We cooked in a Spanish kitchen with a big paella dish and things like that. So you really can immerse yourself into a culture as well.
Christi: You have some resources for people that want to [00:32:00] do house-sitting,
Belinda: So it's called the House Sitting Collective. I have several courses and one is how to housesit. And I go through everything. I go through how to write your application using power words. So for example, power words are things like I'm responsible friendly and all that sort of thing.
But I go into the whole. Science behind Power Words and how to use power words in your application and your profile. And then I have another course on how to write the perfect profile because house-sitting is becoming more and more competitive. If you have a look on my on my homepage on how sitting collective it is growing at a rate of 12% per annum.
So, with house-sitting, your profile is like your shop window. What is going to make homeowners stop? And walk into your store and see what you have to offer. And that's how important a profile is. And then I have one called the House-sitting Fundamentals, which basically goes through everything. It goes through the meet and greet. And I've got a lot [00:33:00] of free resources and resources within the course.
Emergency contact lists, you know, all these sorts of things to make sure that you can tick off everything and make sure that you're totally prepared. And what happens if the dog goes missing or the cat goes missing or, or something goes wrong with the home. Because when you are house-sitting, you are looking after homeowners most prized possessions.
It's their home. It's their home. And also their animals, which are for a lot of people are like family members, trust is so important, and I go into that as well.
Christi: Is it all pet sitting or is it a lot pet sitting?
Belinda: It is usually pet-sitting And this is what is growing exponentially now because, I can remember we used to put our dog in a kennel when we used to go on holiday.
it was just normal. We drove down to the kennel, drop Sunshine off. The dog was called Sunshine Drop, Sunshine off at the kennel and off we went to the airport. But that's not it's kind of like, almost [00:34:00] like not the done thing anymore. Like people have this understanding that the pet, their pet, their cat or their dog or their rabbit or whatever is much more content in its own home.
And also the other thing is, is if someone's living in the home, their home is going, is less likely to get broken into if something goes wrong, if they have a, something wrong with the water and they get a flood or something like that, there's someone there immediately who can look after everything. This is why house-sitting has just really, it's, it's growing at Such a speedy rate.
Belinda: Don't forget about the the code, the discount.
Christi: Yes, that's right. Okay. Discount code HSTRAVEL promo code
Belinda: Yeah. Yeah.
Christi: There's a special code that Belinda is offering listeners HSTRAVEL, so that will be in the show notes That's great. You offer these resources, so Well this has been a real pleasure. [00:35:00] Thank you so much, Belinda.
Belinda: Well, I hope I can encourage anybody out there who's who just wants a little bit more adventure in your life that it really is there for the taking.
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