Travel Built Around What You Love to Do

Some of my most enjoyable trips to plan are the ones built around a specific passion. Not a destination first — an activity first. A bucket-list golf course. A tennis week at a storied club. A walking itinerary through wine country. When travel starts with something you genuinely love, the destination becomes a frame rather than the whole picture.

This works particularly well for the retired couples and active travelers I work with most. They have earned the time and they know what they enjoy. My job is to find the right setting for it.

Golf Travel Done Properly

The golf courses worth traveling for — St Andrews, Pebble Beach, Ballybunion, Portmarnock, the courses along the Irish coast — require advance planning, local knowledge, and in some cases years-out tee time requests. I handle all of that. I also make sure the rest of the trip holds up: the right accommodations nearby, a few good restaurants, enough flexibility that a round of golf does not feel like a military operation.

Scotland is the destination I recommend most for serious golfers. A week in Fife or along the Ayrshire coast with a handful of legendary courses, a castle hotel, and time to simply enjoy the landscape — it is one of the best trips I put together.

Tennis, Walking, and Other Passion-Led Travel

Major tennis tournaments — Wimbledon, Roland Garros, the US Open — are popular requests. Tickets through official channels are difficult to secure and hospitality packages sell fast. I work with suppliers who have consistent access, and I build the surrounding trip accordingly: the right London neighborhood for Wimbledon, the right Paris arrondissement for Roland Garros.

Walking holidays have become one of my more frequent requests, particularly for the Camino de Santiago, the Cotswolds, and coastal paths in Ireland and Portugal. These trips require careful logistics — luggage transfers, booking guesthouses along the route, knowing which stretches are genuinely beautiful and which can be skipped — but when they are done right, they are transformative.

What Makes These Trips Work

Passion-led travel succeeds when the passion is honored and the logistics disappear. You should not be thinking about transfers or tee time confirmations or whether your hotel can accommodate an early checkout. That is what I am there for.

The most common mistake I see is clients trying to pack too much into a specialty trip. A golf trip does not need to be a city tour too. A walking holiday does not need three flights between stages. Keeping the focus is what makes the experience memorable rather than exhausting.

Have something specific in mind? Whether it is a course, a tournament, a trail, or a wine region, tell me what you are after and I will build something around it.

— Kathleen