Susan Griffith - Work Your Way Around the World: The globetrotters bible

The world is always changing, hence the need for a new edition of this book at regular intervals. Some changes are welcome, for example the explosion of bloggers, traders and entrepreneurs successfully funding long stays abroad as digital nomads, or the recent price drop for a Working Holiday Visa for Australia, since employers in the countryside are crying out for backpacker labour. The number of young North Americans taking a gap year before university has increased dramatically, and this edition includes a new chapter aimed at all school leavers who are contemplating a year out.

Other developments are not such good news for the adventurous traveller wanting to explore the world. Implementation of the UK decision to leave the European Union may eventually result in the loss of the automatic right to work in Europe. Given that, for many, the idea of escape might be especially appealing now, of heading further afield to work a season at a Canadian ski resort, teach in Turkey or Taiwan, or volunteer at a national park in Costa Rica, out of reach of gloomy headlines and the relentless media coverage of Brexit.

Amid all the changes, I am heartened by how much stays the same, and by the longevity of some shortcuts to seeing the world on a shoestring: the family-run business in Toronto that matches drivers with cars to be delivered to Florida in the autumn, the obscure agency in Essex that recruits seasonal participants for Disneys International Programs in the US, and that hoary old chestnut WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) that keeps expanding and welcomes volunteers to work in exchange for food and accommodation.

I often pause to marvel at the wonders of the internet. By typing a few letters into a search bar, anyone can find out about amazing possibilities tefl.com (for teaching English), wf.is (volunteering in Iceland), swap.ca (work programmes for Canadians) and so on. Yet the internet and social media can be bewildering and discouraging places to pin down paying or volunteer opportunities abroad. This book attempts to introduce you to the panoply of possibilities, and to simplify a preliminary search.

Since the last edition, I have spent a glorious three months in the Bay area of California, and have travelled to Australia, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Canada, etc., where I have met an impressive range of enterprising travellers. For this 17th edition of Work Your Way Around the Worldmy network of informants has encompassed a Belgian man who picked grapes in Beaujolais and worked in a bar on Lake Geneva while living with his Spanish girlfriend in a camper van; a retired American teaching English in Madrid; a 20-something Englishwoman who has set up her own English language school in southern Bolivia; an Australian exchange student living in Berlin; a graduate who joined a post-earthquake reconstruction project in Nepal, and a Cambridge punt guide and model designer who was determined to work on a Mediterranean yacht. Whatever their backgrounds, these folks are happy to expose themselves to the unexpected friendliness and generosity of foreign residents and fellow travellers.

Few of us can simply sail off beyond the blue horizon without giving careful thought to how to finance such a thrilling expedition.