Louise Tickle is a Gloucestershire-based freelance journalist whose activity and wildlife travel writing for publications including The Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent on Sunday, Elle, Coast, BBC Wildlife and BBC Countryfile has encompassed testing out a luxury bootcamp in Crete and sea kayaking in the Outer Hebrides to tracking otters on Shetland and learning to sail catamarans in the Caribbean. Her favourite place in the world is Skomer island, off the Pembrokeshire coast, to which she has returned many times over the past twenty years both as a volunteer and a visitor. Despite the distinct lack of luxury involved in staying in the island¹s now-demolished cowsheds, she has intensely happy memories of waking up to a cold, damp dawn and heading off to help count gull chicks with a thermos of hot chocolate to stave off the chill. www.louisetickle.co.uk, Twitter.