Privacy policy

Who we are

It’s Midlife Adventures is our travel blog, run by us, Mark Butland and Jenny, from Hampshire in the UK. Mark looks after the website and any data it handles. If you have any questions about your data, email info@itsmidlifeadventures.com.

What’s collected and why

Visitor statistics (only if you accept)

We use Jetpack Stats, run by Automattic, to see which pages and trips people read, roughly which country they’re in and how they found the site. To produce these counts Automattic receives your IP address and some details of your browser and device. The reports we see don’t tell us who you are.

Lawful basis: your consent. You can change your mind at any time using Cookie settings, which is also at the foot of every page.

YouTube videos (only if you accept)

The Home page shows our latest YouTube videos. Before you accept, clicking a video takes you to YouTube to watch it. If you accept, videos play here on the page, and YouTube (owned by Google) can then set its own cookies. The video thumbnails are loaded from YouTube’s image servers, which receive your IP address in order to send them.

Lawful basis: your consent.

Weather forecasts

Our country and trip pages show a seven-day forecast from weatherwidget.io. The forecast is loaded from their servers, which receive your IP address in order to send it.

Lawful basis: legitimate interests (showing the weather for the places we write about).

Server logs

Like every website, the server records technical details of each visit: your IP address, the date and time, the page requested and your browser type. These logs keep the site secure and working, and they’re held by our hosting provider, IONOS, for a limited period.

Lawful basis: legitimate interests (keeping the site running and secure).

Emails

If you email us, we use your address and message only to reply. We don’t add anyone to a mailing list.

Lawful basis: legitimate interests (answering your message).

Fonts and scripts

The site’s typefaces come from Google Fonts, one small script comes from jsDelivr, and the author picture on our diary posts comes from Gravatar. Each of these services receives your IP address in order to send the file.

Cookies

Cookie	What it does	How long
ima_consent	Remembers whether you accepted or rejected cookies	6 months
YouTube cookies	Set by YouTube when a video plays on the page (only if you accept). See Google’s cookie policy.	Up to 2 years
Jetpack Stats	Counts visits for our statistics (only if you accept). See Automattic’s cookie policy.	Varies

WordPress sets its own login cookies for the site’s admin area, which only we use.

Links to other sites

Our posts link to hotels, tour operators, official tourist sites and our YouTube, Instagram and Facebook pages. If you follow a link, that site’s own privacy policy applies. One link is a referral code for the Nomad eSIM: if you sign up with it we get a small credit, but Nomad doesn’t share your details with us.

Who else handles data

• IONOS, which hosts the site.
• Automattic, for Jetpack Stats (only if you accept), Gravatar, and the site’s security and spam protection.
• Google, for YouTube (the player only if you accept) and Google Fonts.
• weatherwidget.io, for the weather forecasts.
• jsDelivr, which serves one script.

Some of these companies may process data outside the UK, using the safeguards required by UK data protection law. Nobody else receives your data.

How long data is kept

Visitor statistics are kept by Automattic in line with its own policy. Emails are kept only as long as we need them to deal with your message.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask to see the personal data we hold about you, and ask for it to be corrected or deleted. You can also object to how it’s used, or withdraw your consent at any time. To do any of these, email info@itsmidlifeadventures.com.

If you’re unhappy with how your data has been handled, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top will change too.