Get out there, and do it!

Over the years, I've received quite a few emails and letters from people wondering what qualifications they need to become travel writers. Of course, these days, there are media studies courses, and writing courses, although I can't imagine an editor would be that impressed by someone brandishing a diploma. Ultimately, what counts is what you produce. When it comes to freelancing, you're still only as good as your last piece, and as bad as your worst. Think about it.

There's no real short cut to success, and while various qualifications you pick up along the way might prove useful weapons in your armoury, they don't guarantee anything. So what do you need? Well, it should go without saying that you need to be able to write decent English, and be able to spell. The general standard of written English has declined over recent years, but that's no excuse for sloppiness.

There are many different disciplines in travel writing, from the kind of inspirational pieces you read in newspapers and magazines, to the more factual stuff you find in guidebooks. So you need to combine a childlike enthusiasm and sense of wonder with the ability to note down the nitty-gritty facts, and maybe ask the odd searching question or two. Then put it all down in a manner which readers will find informative and entertaining. If it isn't a good read, no one is going to be interested.

I fell into journalism by accident. After very nearly making it playing bass in a rock band in the 1970s, I started writing in my spare time, concentrating on my passion for walking and camping, and in particular the clothing and equipment needed to do it. I was fortunate enough to get my feet under the table with a newly launched magazine (The Great Outdoors, now TGO), and I showed enough flair and enthusiasm for them to ask me to contribute equipment reviews and features on a regular basis. It was lucky for me too that the early 1980s saw a quantum leap in technological advancements in outdoors clothing and equipment the like of which has not been seen since. Outdoors magazines needed people who understood and could put into layman's English what the pioneers in this brave new world were doing.

Within two years, the deputy editor's job became vacant, and I was asked if I would like to apply. I did, and whilst I didn't get the job, it was the catalyst that changed my life. I reasoned that if they thought that much of me to consider me as deputy editor, I ought to have what it took to try freelancing. And so in 1983 I turned my back on a mundane office job, with the guarantee of a paltry £40 a month from The Great Outdoors. My first assignment was to undertake a three-week coast-to-coast walk across Scotland with the magazine's editor!

Like most publications covering holiday angles, they received invitations from tourist offices and tour operators to visit all manner of places, sampling walking and trekking holidays. With just two staff running the magazine, they couldn't take up many of the offers, and so they passed them on to me – my first working overseas trip in the summer of 1983 was to Iceland , and I fell in love with the place.

Then, as now, outdoors magazine freelance rates were painfully low, so I needed to find alternative markets for stories to properly justify a trip away from home. Within six months I'd sold my first piece to the Sunday Express. A couple of years later I bumped into a BBC radio presenter (on a bobsleigh about to ride down the Olympic Bob Run in St Moritz !), and before I knew it, he and I were making travel features for local radio. It was the perfect combination – wherever I went, at the very least I would hope to get a specialised walking feature, a more general travel story for a newspaper or magazine, and a radio feature as well.

What advice do I offer to anyone who wants to be a travel writer? If you want to write for national newspapers, you need to prepare for a fight. The market is diminishing, and the competition with other writers is fierce. I came into it from a particular speciality, and I think it's a worthwhile ploy, whether you choose to specialise in the outdoors, as I did, or other areas – cooking, spas, educational holidays, business travel. Amazingly, every woman travel writer who has a baby suddenly becomes an expert on family travel, and there are even people who specialise in weddings, religion and festivals!

So hone your skills as a writer, find your niche, and jump in fearlessly!