About me

About Me

Welcome to AlanSpeak Travel. If you have landed on this page, you are probably trying to work out who is actually behind the website and what exactly AlanSpeak does.

The short answer is: I am Alan. I am Irish, I have lived in Spain since the late 1980s, and travel, languages and living between countries have been part of my life for rather longer than I care to calculate.

AlanSpeak is an independent travel business, but its roots go back more than 30 years to something that remains at the heart of what I do: bringing people to Ireland to learn English. Over the years that has meant different ages, different programmes and changing expectations, but the basic idea has remained remarkably constant — learning a language works better when you actually live it.

Today I am developing that side of the business further, with a renewed focus on summer English programmes for minors and, in the future, courses for adults in Ireland. Alongside it, I am building a very different second specialism in India, developing the first-hand knowledge and professional relationships needed to do it properly.

English, Ireland and Learning Through Experience

One of the most important directions for AlanSpeak is English-language travel to Ireland.

For younger students, particularly during the summer, learning English abroad should be about considerably more than sitting in a classroom for a few hours and then being kept occupied until bedtime. The language is important, obviously, but so are independence, confidence, friendships, cultural contact and the experience of functioning in English in the real world.

Ireland is particularly good at this. English is everywhere, but so are history, music, sport, landscape, humour and a culture in which conversation still matters. For a young person, the experience can be educational without every minute needing to feel like a lesson.

AlanSpeak is developing summer English programmes for minors around that idea: English is the reason for travelling, but Ireland is part of the education.

The same philosophy will extend to future programmes for adults who want to improve their English in Ireland without feeling that they have accidentally enrolled in summer school twenty or thirty years too late. Language learning can be combined with culture, travel and real interaction with the country.

And Then There Is India

India is developing into another important part of AlanSpeak Travel, although for very different reasons.

It is an enormous, complicated and extraordinarily varied country, and precisely the sort of destination where good local knowledge and good professional contacts matter. Trying to reduce India to the Taj Mahal, Rajasthan and a few nights in Goa does it very little justice.

I am developing AlanSpeak’s India programme gradually, working directly with Indian tourism professionals, hotels, destination specialists and local operators while travelling and researching the country myself. Particular areas of interest include Kerala and South India, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, alongside the practical business of connecting them into journeys that work.

I would much rather build that knowledge properly than stick the word “specialist” on a webpage prematurely. The objective is straightforward: to know the destinations, know the people providing the services and understand which experiences are genuinely worth recommending.

Travel Without the Brochure Language

This probably explains quite a lot about how I approach travel generally.

I have travelled for most of my life, but not in the glamorous influencer sense of the word. My experience is closer to the reality most people recognise: missed trains, questionable hotel decisions, accidental discoveries, exhausted airport coffees, conversations with complete strangers and those odd little moments abroad that you remember years after you have forgotten the name of the museum you visited.

I also learnt a long time ago that imagination is rarely the biggest limitation on travel. Money, time and energy usually are.

Good travel planning therefore isn’t about pretending budgets don’t exist or trying to turn every holiday into a once-in-a-lifetime luxury experience. It is about deciding where the money is worth spending, where it isn’t, and how to get the best experience from the time and budget actually available.

Sometimes that means an unusual journey through India or a summer learning English in Ireland. Sometimes it means a cruise, a train journey, a city break or a week somewhere warm with a balcony and absolutely no intention of doing anything educational whatsoever.

There is room for all of it.

Travellismus

There is also a less commercial side to all this. Travellismus is where I write about the more human side of travelling: the observations, people, absurd situations, cultural differences and occasional disasters that don’t fit neatly into destination guides or holiday brochures.

Travel can educate you, exhaust you, embarrass you, calm you down or completely change your perspective without warning. Sometimes it gives you beauty. Sometimes it gives you chaos. Quite often it gives you both before lunch.

Where AlanSpeak Is Going

AlanSpeak Travel isn’t trying to become another enormous website selling every possible holiday to everybody.

The direction is increasingly deliberate: English and educational travel in Ireland, carefully developed specialist travel in India, and selected travel experiences where personal knowledge and professional relationships can genuinely add something.

It will continue to evolve as I travel, learn, meet people and discover places worth sharing.

And if something isn’t worth recommending, I would rather say so.

Save the website, come back from time to time and see where the next journey leads. The best travel plans have a habit of changing direction when you least expect them to.

If you are looking for travel inspiration that does not come from a brochure, explore the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.