Hayley spent her childhood in North Wales but considers Chester her home. She has been travelling for the past two-and-a-half years. Before that, Hayley was a reporter for regional daily newspaper, The Chester Leader. She left the UK in 2009 to go to New Zealand on a working holiday visa and stopped off in Hong Kong along the way, which became her first experience of travelling solo. It was then that the travel bug really took hold. Despite intending to be away for only six months, she ended up spending two years in New Zealand, working and travelling around the north and south islands with a trip to Samoa thrown in for good measure. She then made the move across the Tasman Sea to Australia and lived in Sydney for five months before travelling up the east coast of Australia and across to Darwin, where she currently lives and works.