At Plannercon Europe this year I was given amongst many other things, a Letts Travel Journal. I’ve only recently had a chance to take it out of the packet and look at it in more detail. I’m glad I did because it will prove very useful for me when travelling around Europe.

The journal measures 130 mm by 200 mm which isn’t an ISO page size, but that matters less when it is a bound book. It’s not too big and not too small. It is fairly close to A5 in dimensions. The covers are card hard covers, so it will slip neatly in to your bag or backpack and it should be rugged enough to survive many journeys.

The journal is made up of 192 pages of 90 gsm paper and they claim it to be fountain pen friendly. The paper is very nice to the touch and it is stitch bound.

The introduction page gives you background to Letts of London which is one of the oldest companies still in the book binding business, they also claim to be the first commercial diary makers.

The personal notes page contains the usual headings for you to fill in as you wish.

There is then some contents pages, the main pages are numbered, so a contents/index pages will prove useful in coming years for finding your notes about specific trips.

This is one of the main journal pages, they are nicely lined with essential headings only. I personally prefer lined pages, my writing and hand/eye co-ordination doesn’t work well on blank pages for writing anything approaching ‘neatly’

After 148 journal pages there is a 12 month year planner spread over 4 pages. This isn’t year specific, so there are no days against the dates.

The city information is quite comprehensive covering most of the major cities in the world. You could of course add in information about the towns/cities you are going to be visiting in your travels.

A World Time Zone map is always helpful when it comes to knowing what time it is at ‘home’ before you try to telephone home only to later realise it is 03:30am!

There is some conversion/information/clothing size information on a couple of pages followed by Expenses pages. Useful for business travellers.

Dates to remember could be used for recording information you need to remember whilst you are away, or to provide an overview of your travel plans. It’s a flexible enough layout that you could use it as you wish.

We all meet people on our travels, my memory for names is terrible (old age!) so these pages will be useful for remembering who it was I chatted with in a bar/restaurant or on the train on that trip 6 months ago!

There are then some notes pages on un-numbered pages.

And finally in the back cover there is a slip pocket that you can use to save tickets or other paper ephemera from our travels.

Overall I’m very pleased with this journal and thank you to Letts of London for this sample.