You can always rely on the good old British weather to sabotage a summer barbecue, but our travel blogger friends refused to be defeated!

We teamed up with Matt Preston from Travel With A Mate and the Brighton Thistle Hotel to organise an event for the Travel Blogger Meetup Group, and it was a fantastic success with 20 or so travel bloggers attending.

The evening kicked off with beers and a barbecue on the beach - at least while there was some sunshine - before heading over to the Thistle Hotel which had kindly given us use of its exclusive penthouse suite for the evening.

More networking (and drinking) ensued while we enjoyed what must be one of the best views in Brighton.
It wasn’t all about looking out of the window… we had a great discussion about how bloggers and PRs can work better together. Some useful points were shared (including a list of bloggers’ pet hates) and they’re deserving of a separate post, which we’ll get out next week.

In the meantime, thanks to everyone who attended and contributed, including:

• Jayne Gorman (@jayneytravels) - A travel blogger both personally and professional. Jane set herself an ambitious challenge of visiting 40 countries before 30. Currently aged 26, with a full-time job and an extremely limited budget she’s impressively on target, having been to 35 countries!
• Nadia Latif (@nadia_latif) - The editor of Gapdemon.com - a fantastic community website for travellers which enables the sharing of travel tips and advice from other gap year travellers.
• Si Salter (@NoMadRush) - A part time blogger and podcaster at Nomadrush.posterous.com - which was launched when Si drove an old banger from his home in Essex all the way to the Gambia!
• Justin Morris (@jm_deluxe) -An Australian expat who moved to the UK to travel as much of Europe as possible and experience new places and cultures. Justin blogs at 48-houradventue.com - a blog dedicated to inspiring others on what you can do in 48 hours in a destination!
• Candace Rardon (@candacerardon) - A freelance writer, traveller and photographer, blogging at Real Travels.

Thanks guys, next time we’ll make sure there’s more sunshine!