vallierojas: Working holidays made easy

HelpX puts people who want a working break in touch with projects that need helpers, from restoration to chocolate-making

Trying to organise an adventurous working holiday as a student years ago felt like an expedition in itself. Spending six weeks picking fruit didn't seem interesting enough, and anything more stimulating cost the price of a Louis Vuitton suitcase. I ended up spending entire summer breaks working at the local hotel or hospital.

A lot of students around the world were in similar situations, I imagine. But while we searched for excitement, Rob Prince ? an experienced working traveller ? was busy setting up a very simple website to make our lives easier.

Prince, now 42, spent much of his early 20s travelling around Australia and New Zealand, finding work via farmers' notices on hostel boards. When the internet arrived a few years later he saw the opportunity to make working holidays easier to find, and so created the HelpX site. Short for Help Exchange, it launched in 2001 and now lists more than 5,000 active projects that need helpers, from eco-house builds, to small chocolate making businesses or yoga centres.

I'm now in my 30s and have just spent two memorable months travelling around Europe "HelpXing" at all sorts of places ? from a rustic 13th-century monastery in the green hills of Aveyron, France, to an Austrian bar snuggled in the Tyrolean mountains.

I went away as someone who struggled to open a tool box and came back an amateur sander, gardener and chicken keeper who knows how to restore walls using lime plaster. I also have a deeper understanding of European cultures thanks to living and working with local people.

HelpXers work up to 28 hours a week in exchange for food and accommodation. Hosts are often flexible with hours. Sometimes extras such as free use of old cars, bikes and day trips are thrown in. Accommodation for me varied from a mattress on a floor with a motley crew of other helpers to my own private bedroom with en-suite.

Most of the time helpers don't need any relevant skills, Prince says. They just need to be ready, willing and able to lend a hand.

Occasionally, you'll find architecture or restoration students getting some real life work experience while HelpXing. There are plenty of learning opportunities, and any skills you have are likely to be picked up and used.

Sonya Hallett, a 24-year-old graphic designer and children's book illustrator, often gets asked to help out with web design and artwork. She's also learned new skills and discovered a lot about herself along the way, she says.

"In Austria I learned to smoke ham and make elderflower juice, as well as plenty of other cooking and farming and language skills. I also learned that I'm able to stick to a fairly strict schedule of 6am wake-ups and lots of manual work ? something a lot of city people don't get the chance to experience. I think HelpXing is ideal for recent graduates at a time when jobs are hard to come by. It keeps people motivated."

Hallett, like many other HelpXers ? there are 135,000 worldwide ? prefers the HelpX site to other work exchange schemes, such as Wwoof , because it allows reviews of hosts and helpers, as well as a wider range of projects.

Someone who's tried out more of those projects than most is Sam Miller, a 40-year-old Brit who left his job as a garden designer and co-owner of a garden centre four years ago and has been HelpXing ever since. Specific hosts have invited him because of his horticultural experience, he says, but after several years it would be a challenge to find a CV more colourful than his.

"Where do I start?" he says. "I now know how to tell the sex of a crayfish and castrate bullocks, I can do childminding, woodwork, stonework, roofing, plumbing, tiling, cement mixing and can build a straw-bale house. Also, more bizarrely, I've learned how to work in the nude after staying at a naturist place in New Zealand," he laughs.

Miller has earned a bit of money along the way doing paid seasons at ski resorts to keep himself topped up, although he says he spends very little money. He is hoping to settle down soon and plans to use his new skills to build his own home. The practical knowledge he's acquired is invaluable, but more deeply he values how adaptable HelpXing has made him.

Hosts have to be good at adapting too if they want to truly embrace the HelpX life. Most get helpers in to save a bit of money but, for many ? like Virginie Gregory-Cullen and her partner Martin ? the social and communal living aspect is a big part of the draw.

The couple, who are in their mid-40s, decided to up sticks to France seven years ago, buy an old house and restore it as ecologically as possible.

"It's a very sociable way of life with a lot of surprises," says Gregory-Cullen. "We really enjoy it and so does our 11-year-old son. We're always pleased when daunting jobs progress a little faster and we save a bit of money, although it's rarely a huge amount that we save because helpers are unskilled and we really take our time explaining things to them. Everyone has different ideas about things," she says.

Most of the couple's helpers are in their 20s, and she says she and her partner enjoy getting an insight into a generation that had been a bit of a mystery to them. "We like hearing about their lives and what we've learned after hosting 27 volunteers is that many people are not getting the opportunity to learn basic practical skills at home or in education and this is going to be a problem in the future," Gregory-Cullen says. "We hope that, on leaving, our helpers have learned something practical, and also something about their capabilities."

The couple hope to help out other hosts with their projects. Perhaps they will be in their 50s by then, but one of the joys of HelpXing is the variety of ages it attracts. Founder Prince points me to the story of 71-year-old Lilian Hoika, who has HelpXed in Australia and New Zealand off-and-on over the past couple of years.

After retiring from a professional career she found herself yearning for one last big adventure and found that many hosts were more than happy to have a mature helper.

"My preferred tasks were physical," Hoika says. "I did a lot of gardening chores of all kinds ? painting, window washing, stacking firewood," she says. "I was clear that, just because I was grandma age, I didn't want to get roped into childminding. I loved the variety of work, accommodation, meals, environment and cultures, and I always felt more of a guest or visiting family member than a helper."

Peter Simpson, 58, went HelpXing with a broken heart and had a fantastic time. He found himself in a bit of a "fatherly" role of organising HelpXers. "I enjoyed working with hosts and helpers younger than me and the whole experience was very positive," he says.

Offering advice to others who want to get the most out of travelling and working at the same time, he says: "I found it good to travel with a compact computer and contact hosts en route from Wi-Fi cafes in big cities. I usually did a spell of HelpXing and then spent a weekend in a city visiting the sites and planning the next bit."

Not everyone, of course, has a perfect HelpX experience. There are occasional stories of unsavoury slave-driver hosts, the odd bit of petty theft by helpers and a fair few unglamorous jobs. One volunteer told me how she spent several weeks shovelling animal poo around all day. But judging by the reviews on the website, most experiences are overwhelmingly positive.

With huge numbers of unemployed students and redundant professionals at a loose end at the moment, it's not surprising the number of HelpX members has grown by 40% year on year, according to Prince.

You'll rarely have trouble finding a HelpX host, but the best places do book up early, particularly in the summer. So if you fancy broadening your horizons and job skills this year, for the cost of an �18 registration fee, get in quick.