Name: Sean Newsom
Occupation: Founding editor of welove2ski.com and travel writer
Website: welove2ski.com
Why do you love to travel?
Put me in one place for more than three or four weeks and I start bouncing off the walls and screaming. Travel makes this feeling go away.
Who would be your ideal travel partner and why?
My wife, Vera, and my three year old son, Sam.
What’s been your favourite destination this year and why?
Skiing in California in March. We arrived at Northstar to find a metre and half of fresh powder on the mountain. Even for a ski writer, that feels like a miracle.
Describe the most unusual situation you’ve found yourself in while travelling.
Waking up two trawlermen to ask if we lash our yacht to the side of their boat, during an apocalyptic storm in the NZ’s Gulf of Hauraki in 1995. We’d been blown off our anchorage, and the anchor chain had wrapped itself around our keel. It was 1am, and we were spinning round in circles with cliffs on two sides, and nothing to see by except the occasional flash of lightning. This was on a press trip, you understand, designed to show us the delights of island hopping around the North Island…
Name two up-and-coming destinations for 2012 and why.
Wherever the snow falls!
If you could return to any country you’ve been to, what would it be and why?
Give me a cold and sunny powder day in the back bowls of Vail, Colorado, and I’ll be happy.
Give us an overview of what you’ll be discussing at the TNT Sun And Snow Show:
Is travel writing dead? I’ll be looking at the roller-coaster ride my profession has been through in the last 20 years, and suggesting ways in which you can still make a living out of it. In particular, I’ll be talking about how to make skiing and snowboarding pay.
Who will find your talk relevant?
Anyone who’s wondering if they could make money out of all the emails, pictures, Tweets, and FB posts they produce on their travels
Where’s your favourite place in London?
Epping Forest – London’s largest open space, and its most beautiful woodland – and it’s almost unknown to anyone but the locals.
Sum up the capital in five words:
very tough for the young.
