“ What a curious plan ”? – it’s all in a name…..

We always knew our blog would be called “A curious plan” Oh no that’s not right, I must be thinking of someone else. That wasn’t us at all. We didn’t have a clue….

We Googled, we bumbled our way around “top tips for domain names”, we scoured the web for inspiration. Still the name eluded us. We bickered, we brainstormed, we debated. I proposed “Tiny Toms adventures” “Team Toms on Tour” “ Travelling with Toms”....Steve boycotted anything with our names in it; too egotistical. Or anything with “travel” or “adventure” or “on tour” for that matter; too smug, too old hat, too cliched.

Finally we fell upon the idea of a family catchphrase, something personal and unique that would remind us of this time. It also had to make sense, be suitable for public consumption and have at least some tenuous link to the subject of our blog.

Over dinner that evening with friends we bemoaned our lack of name and the struggles we were having when one of them casually piped up “what about “curious plan”?”

“What a curious plan?” is a much repeated line throughout our favourite Julia Donaldson book “A squash and a squeeze”. One of only 3 books that made it into the backpacks this book gets read in our house a lot. Try every night for 4 months a lot. Luckily, we love this book and could read it for years and not tire of it. It is a brilliant little tale of learning to appreciate what you've already got. The moral of the story is happiness comes from the way you look at things and sometimes a change of perspective is all you need.

“What a curious plan” has become a pet phrase to capture some of the odd, unusual and new things we find ourselves doing on a daily basis. The name also describes the reason we write; a place to share our stories with anyone “curious” about what we are up to on our travels. We also share helpful tips, insights, advice and information about the places we've been to help you plan your own family adventure.

Thank you Maria Parnham for your inspiration.