This is not a travel guide and it does not offer definitive advice about where to stay etc. It is simply an honest, realistic account of my adventures as a relatively experienced traveller. Since developing the travelling bug, I have driven across Canada, dived the oceans of Indonesia and the Middle East, been to Australia, New Zealand etc.
Mum, can I go to Greenland?’ I was just seventeen years old when I first got the travelling bug. I was at school, in the first year of my A-levels and had no real idea what I wanted to do with my life. I’d never been further than the South of France on holiday with my parents and that was quite exotic considering the years of caravanning on the Isle of Wight and Cornwall.
Then one day as I sat looking out onto the rest of the school and listening to another boring assembly, something caught my attention. The British Schools Exploring Society was running expeditions to remote locations of the world and inviting young people aged sixteen to twenty-three to join. It would be for seven weeks in the summer holidays, you raised the money yourself through sponsorship and hard work and got to travel and see the world.
I felt that little spark of excitement in the pit of my stomach, started imagining all the fantastic opportunities, already started planning how I could raise the cash and for the first time in my life I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to travel.
This book isn’t intended as a travel guide, or novel, but is a way of sharing my amazing travel experiences in Greenland, Australia, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Colombia with others – those who have travelled and those who have yet to. But also to inspire those who’ve ever heard themselves say, ‘I’d love to travel’, but never thought they’d be able to, to realise that it is possible, if you really want it enough.
There is a beautiful world out there...what are you waiting for?
I started my travels in Kent in the years after 1974 exploring the garden and area immediately outside our house because we weren’t allowed to cross the road – and we lived in a cul-de-sac. Holidays were wonderful, close family affairs to the Isle of Wight, Devon and Wales, usually in static caravans and then to France, Spain and the big one to Disney World, as we got older. I started travelling properly though, when I was just seventeen with the British School’s Exploring Society (BSES) on an adventure to Greenland that would mould the rest of my life. I had never even been on a plane before then, yet I found myself traversing uncharted territory across the snowfields of a remote landscape, with people I had met only weeks before. Since developing the travelling bug, I have driven across Canada in a motor home, dived the oceans of Indonesia and the Middle East, been camel riding in Australia, swam with dolphins in New Zealand, learned about the devastation of the drug trade whilst living with locals across Colombia and been humbled by the happiness of people with so little across South East Asia. I love to share my stories with anyone who will listen and I am so passionate about travelling and all the life experiences it brings. I’ve made some lifelong friends through my travels and done some unbelievable things. I went to University in Newcastle (much to the horror of my dad, who still hates the place I never returned home from after completing my degree!) and studied Geography – which I naturally loved – and Land Surveying, which I naturally didn’t. I decided that a career staring through a Theodolite at a levelling staff wasn’t [...]
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.