About Us

Nigel Dockerty & Sarah Carter

Hello!  We’re Sarah & Nigel – ASocialNomad

We met in Courmayeur Ski Resort, Italy on Christmas Day.  It came as no surprise that we bucked tradition and eloped to Canada – getting married at the top of Big White Ski Mountain, British Columbia. 

We’re British by birth, but left the UK in 2010, spending the next four years in the USA – Sarah took an internal transfer and promotion to work in Silicon Valley, California. Nigel took the “non-working spouse visa” literally and didn’t.  Mind you, Sarah didn’t iron or clean the house for four years, so both were happy with the situation.

After four years of exploring the USA and Canada, Sarah quit her position as General Manager of Social Business, we sold and gave away our belongings and set off to see the world.

We’ve been traveling with backpacks since February 2014.    You can always find out where we are by checking out where we are

Our Style of Travel

We like to travel slowly, on local buses and on trains.  We each travel with a 40-litre backpack (although it was 50 litres in South America) and a laptop.  We love to walk, hike and trek.   We sleep in hostels, in cheap hotels, in AirBnB, in tents.  Where necessary we sleep on trains and buses.  Sometimes even train stations.  In Australia and New Zealand, we slept in vans and in a tent on the roof of a Toyota Landcruiser.  In Central America, it was homestays and hostels. 

We make a list for everywhere that we go – that list places we want to visit, the food we want to eat, and things we want to drink.  So you’ll find us wine tasting, eating everything from street food to five-star restaurants (only if they let us in of course!)

We are Gen X Travellers with a Y attitude.

Sarah Carter

In the US Sarah was the General Manager of Social Business for Actiance, a US-based IT company providing regulatory compliance solutions, primarily for financial services firms worldwide.  She moved to the US on a specialist visa because of her knowledge of social media and the financial services industry and traveled extensively working with clients and speaking at industry events, including SXSW and SIBOS.  Prior to Actiance, she was on the board of UK-listed Harrier Group plc, until its acquisition.

Then she raced a sailing yacht across the Atlantic, renovated a cottage, and then sold everything in the attic on eBay to finance a vacation.  Sarah has always read avidly, usually through the night and anything at hand.  She skis, doesn’t have the stomach muscles for snowboarding, and had to sell her beloved yacht when they left San Francisco.

Nigel Dockerty

Prior to moving to the USA, Nigel was an IT Project Manager for the Open University (OU), running a team that was responsible for the marketing, sales, and registration systems for the university.  His team also worked on the BBC Big Read, which led to the creation of his reading list, which he continues to read his way through, regardless of the quality of the book or writer.  Expect a lively discussion when he brings up Midnight’s Children.  Nige worked in IT for 25 years, at the Open University and previously at the Northern Rock Building Society.  Since his university years, he’s supported Sunderland AFC and he played cricket for the OU until his retirement when he left for the USA.  Still an avid football and cricket fan, he also skis, broke an arm when snowboarding, and is a reluctant sailor.

This isn’t just our story.  This is our life.  Come on in and enjoy the ride as much as we do.

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