What essential tech do you take on holiday?

Northen Rail WiFi Launch on the Leeds - Bradford Line. Pictured at Leeds City Station are Eliza Whitaker, Sam Day, James Hussain and Hollie Medlock.. Picture Bruce Rollinson

We’ve had a fabulous three-week adventure backpacking around Vancouver Island and seeing some amazing sights, which we will share in my ebook later this year.

I haven’t backpacked for a while and it was interesting to see what technology is considered to be essential now days. I took my mobile phone for emergencies only because of the extortionate roaming tariffs, but as our camera broke in the first week I put it on flight mode and it became our camera.

I also took my old iPad so I could be contacted by the good people left in charge of my business and the dog! - but it too has been very handy. I could stay in touch at no cost just by accessing the free wifi wherever we were staying.

We mostly stayed in youth hostels, some were pretty undesirable, but they all had free wifi. Even a camp site we stayed on had free wifi so crowds gathered outside the office to send messages home.

It also meant we could easily research the next bit of our trip on-line and book the next night’s accommodation. How on earth did we manage when we just used guide books?

There were times when a phone was still the best option though as some people don’t check their email or Facebook page and luckily there are plenty of public phones in British Columbia.

Technology wise the most interesting bit for me was on the first leg of our flight with Canada Rouge. They’re experimenting with ways to be more environmentally friendly and part of that involved removing all the TV monitors from the plane to reduce the weight.

That meant if passengers want the in-flight entertainment we had to download their app’ to our iPad, or rent one of their iPads. It was an interesting idea but unfortunately they didn’t share that information until we were on board and then it was too late to download it. This was a bit of a disappointment for us as the in-flight films are the best bit of a long haul flight, but I love the idea nd as we still carry good old fashioned paper books we were fine.

One of the big differences I noticed is how many people are absorbed in their own personal digi-device. I know of course that for many the screen simply has replaced a book, but eople were also using headphones, so they were travelling but still cut off in their own world which seemed a shame.