Storing Travel Notebooks

Problem
Where to find your notes from your last trip?

Answer
Typed and printed pages from your computer and hand written notebooks with your maps and travel items in one shoe box. Some items will be too large. Include an index of items and directions to the larger items. Label shoe box on all sides.

Label the front and back of each notebook with the date and location.
Number every page in the notebook.
List the details of hotels and museums in an index in the cover.

Angela Lansbury
Travel writer and author

Diaries and notebooks for travellers: + DIY maps, indexes, pockets

When I see an interesting museum I make a note of it in my diary.

Making Lists in Diaries
Maybe you'd like to make a list in your own diary.  If you've no space, find a blank page at the beginning of your diary. Pick a suitable heading to write at the top. Add that title to the diary index. If no index, next time you are waiting at a station with nothing to do, mark the pages of your diary with numbers in the top right corner and create an index at the front blank cover page, if necessary continuing on the back blank cover page.

Travel Diaries
Travel diaries on Amazon cost from about £7, plus postage. It's helpful to Look Inside and see what you get. I like a map of the world, a ribbon page marker, and a map of the underground railway in London or the MRT system in Singapore. (The way to get local maps in a diary is to buy a diary in the country you are visiting.)

I sometimes buy a diary out of season at half price. I did that the first time because I was overseas in midsummer and could not get next year's diary but had to make do with the diary for the current year.

Buying Maps
At the end of the year I could not find another diary with all the maps. I looked through the Filofax section but the maps available did not fit the size of diary I wanted. I thought, what a pity the maps for diaries are not in a separate section so you can transfer them. You can buy expensive hardback notebooks with a triangular or oblong paper pocket in the front cover or back cover or both.

Saving Maps
Then I looked through old diaries to try to find the printer's name and the trademark for that type of travel diary. I had a diary which had pages sewn in and tried to pull out a double page spread of a map or underground map. It started to tear, so I looked for a pair of scissors, a knife, a metal ruler. Success. I had a small size map from last year's diary to insert in a new diary. Two pieces of see through tape fixed the maps in place.

Now, before throwing away an old diary, I always check whether any front pages are useful.

Pockets
You can even create a pocket inside the cover of a diary, if the cover is strong enough to take the weight.

Sets
The cheapest mini-notebooks are a set of four from Poundland in the UK. Small enough to stick in a jacket pocket.