Hosting & planning
Seven days, five towns, one plan: how we organised our group trip
By the Afters team · Updated · 3 min read
Every group trip I have organised has had a spreadsheet. Every spreadsheet has had a tab called “FINAL” and another called “FINAL v2 (actual)”. This year I was organising nine people across seven days and five towns, and I refused to make a third tab.
Seven daily rolls, one invitation
I set the trip up as a multi-day roll: one roll for each of the seven days, all linked. When friends joined, they could choose the whole trip, which included every day, so I only had to invite people once.
Each day opened on its own schedule, with its own countdown. The roll for the day we drove the coast road had a countdown that became a sort of alarm clock: when it hit zero, we were supposed to be in the car. We were, mostly.
The plan lived at the top, not in a file
On the first day’s page I pinned a note with the route, the addresses and who was driving which leg. Then a sign-up list for shared things: the cooler, the speaker, the first-aid kit, “someone who knows how to cook rice for nine”. Every item got claimed within an afternoon.
A poll settled the only real argument of the trip: whether day five was a beach day or a hike. The beach won by one vote. The hikers have been gracious about it, publicly.
Every day became its own chapter
Because each day had its own roll, the photos came back as chapters rather than one endless album. Each morning the previous day developed, and breakfast became a ritual of looking through it together. The day the car got a flat tyre is my favourite chapter. It has eleven photos of nine people pointing at a wheel.
Questions people ask
How long can a multi-day trip be?
Between two and seven days, with one linked roll per day.
Do guests have to join every day separately?
No. When joining, guests can choose that day only or the whole trip, which includes every daily roll.
When do each day’s photos appear?
Each daily roll develops the following morning, so every day’s photos arrive as their own chapter.
Keep reading
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We went looking for enormous landscapes. Our favourite photos were mostly of each other being cold.
Four days in Lisbon, and suddenly we were us again
We had become very good at saying we should meet up. Lisbon was where we finally did.
Who’s bringing the ice? How a sign-up list saved our housewarming
Our last party had five bags of crisps and no ice. This time everything on the list had a face next to it.