Tell us where you are from and what you do?

My name's Lauren. I'm from North Wales, and I am a dancer and content creator.

 

Where are we right now?

We are in North Wales, in Snowdonia. We've just been pondering around Ogwen.

 

What are you wearing today?

I am wearing a gorgeous outfit from Haglofs summer collection, including the bandana and the shoes.

 

If you could sum up your style in three words what would they be?

Ooh that’s a tricky one. My style is cutesy, very like granola girl but with a bit of gorp core in the mix.

 

What does your ideal summer day look like?

My ideal summer day would be to take my van, either down to the beach or to the mountains, and just have a chilled day in nature. I don't need  to be doing extreme sports all the time. Just going on an adventure in my van.

 

Tell us a bit about your van, the conversion and how that has influenced your journey?

I was watching van life reels and everything on TikTok, I just thought I have to do that. I found my van on Facebook marketplace. Which was an incredible find, already converted for a really good price. The van was pre converted but I had so many Pinterest pictures saved for the interior so I was just buying everything, what did I need and what did I want to take out? Do I need storage for this maybe? It is still a work in progress for sure. Then I thought let's go to the Dolomites for three months. I had just finished working on cruise ships so I had time to go. I took her to the Dolomites, spent three months there, and meanwhile I was making content and taking lots of photos. I started posting them on Instagram and that's how I started gaining followers. It was super natural really, I was just doing what I loved.

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Tell us about how you first got into dance? 

I've been dancing my whole life. Since I was three years old. I always knew it's something I wanted to do as a career. I never wanted to do anything else. I remember at school I was always bored. I’m not good at sitting still. I wanted to move and dance all the time. I was a creative kid, you would never see me doing maths and english. I wanted to be making things, doing art or anything like that. I eventually went to college to do dance, then went to university to study dance and it soon enough became my job.

 

What is it about dance that made you fall in love with it?

I did competitive dance, and I'm quite a competitive person. That made me fall in love with it more because I love the aspect of competing but also just being able to express yourself in a way that isn't with words. I’ve never been that good with my words so being able to express how you're feeling through movement was really inspiring and exciting for me.

 

What does your career progression as a dancer look like?

So after university I started working on cruise ships. I worked on cruise ships for three years. I started out as a what was called a glam dancer who specialises in dynamic performances and visual effects. Then I moved onto the smaller ships as a solo dancer and got promoted to dance captain. I traveled to more than 30 countries with the ships and that's really what made me fall in love with travel, because I hadn't traveled much until I started to work on cruise ships. Then I got the travel bug and I thought, okay, this is it. This is it for me.

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When did you first get into hiking and climbing?

When I was working on the ships. I first got into hiking. We were going to Madeira every Friday for six months. It was normally our day off. So we would hire a car for the day and hike all around different trails in Madeira. It's surprising that’s where I got into it, considering I have lived here in North Wales my whole life, but I didn't do it before because my family are not outdoorsy people, so they didn't introduce me to it. I kind of found my way on my own.

 

What do you love most about hiking and or climbing?

I think just being outside, just being able to get away from the noise. I just love being out in nature, enjoying the time and the quiet. I feel like you can really reconnect and get off your phone. Most of the time I don't have signal anywhere in North Wales anyway, so yeah I just love being outside and being with your thoughts like that. With climbing though I can be very determined. I don't like to fail a climb. I think that's definitely where I’m a perfectionist. The competitive dancer in me comes out if I'm on a climb and I'm struggling, I just think no I have to finish this climb. I get a bit competitive sometimes.

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Some people would say dance is a female sport and climbing is a male sport, how do you feel about that?

Sport shouldn't have gender. Sport is for everyone. The outdoors is for everyone. Dance is for everyone. It's a form of expression at the end of the day, even, going outside or whatever sport you do, it's a manifestation of what you love. For me dancing is a manifestation of my love for music and the love for creating something. And when I go outside, it’s a manifestation of my love for nature, the love for the small things. Why does that have to be associated with being a male or a female or whatever you identify as? It should just be associated with your personality. It can be hard to be a girl in this community sometimes. Especially on the content side of things, there can be a lot of negativity.

 

How do you deal with that?

I just ignore it. I think because I don't react to it, I don't get a lot of it. My audience is primarily female based so generally my community is really positive and uplifting. The girls love the fashion side of things. I make a lot of hiking outfit videos and some people can be quite negative and hateful telling me I shouldn’t care about what I wear to go to the mountains. But I just think okay cool maybe they don't need to care about it, but I'm still me and I do care about it because I love fashion.​

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Do you apply dance skills to the outdoor sports you do? If so, what does that look like physically?

Yes! Specifically stamina. When I was dancing I was doing 45 minute shows, non-stop dancing. So when I'm hiking, I definitely have good stamina for it because I'm used to being active for longer periods of time. And then of course with climbing it's the flexibility,  I'm able to use my body in ways that maybe another person wouldn't be used to. I have certain muscle groups that are stronger because of dance that another person might not have. So I do think it helps a lot, at least in my experience. It’s funny when people will say to me if I’m on a hard climb, ‘Oh you're really flexible, just get your leg up to the next hold’, and I'm like yeah okay.

 

When did you first get into fashion and styling?

Well, I've always loved clothes. I've always been very experimental with my style. Even when I was in high school,  I was a bit of a goth. I was always playing around with clothes and seeing what was coming into fashion. I think that also ties into dance, because I was dressing up in costumes so I was always interested in putting outfits together to express how I felt that day. So I guess that is a big part of it. So when I was hiking in the Dolomites I hadn't thought about what I was wearing, they were just outfits I had with me. I hadn’t pre-planned it but that was when I started gaining traction online. The response was great and people loved my outfits. So I started to show them what I have and how I style things. That has continued to give me success on the content creation side of things, which is just amazing.

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What's your favourite thing about fashion?

My favourite thing about fashion is being able to show who you are without having to say anything. I think it just shows your personality in a way that you don't even have to use words.

 

What's your favourite hike or climb you’ve ever been on and why?

I actually don't know. Any hike I did in the Dolomites was probably a favourite hike. I can't pick one because they were all so beautiful. But then there's Madeira as well. I would say anything from either the Dolomites or Madeira. Actually I'm hoping to take the van on a solo trip in August to Europe, so maybe then I’ll find even more favourite hikes.

 

Are there any other mountain sports you haven’t done that you’d like to try or get into?

I would love to try to ski and I'd love to try to snowboard. But I have this fear of falling over or tumbling down a mountain on skis. So I think I'll stick to progressing at climbing for now. Maybe in the winter you'll see me snowboarding and you'll be like, ‘There she is, told you so!’

 

Lastly, what's one piece of advice that's always stuck with you?

Just do what makes you happy. Don't let other people tell you who you are or what to be. Just do what makes you happy. I think that is like the most simple piece of advice you can give to anyone.