As I young child, I liked to play with a Sindy doll. (British Barbie of the 1970s). My Sindy didn’t get dressed up in fancy clothes. Instead, she travelled across the world (in my brother’s Action Man’s helicopter). I researched the routes meticulously using my children’s World Atlas. The back garden could become the Amazon or Sahara in my child’s limitless imagination.
I studied languages at University (partly because that meant spending a year abroad). In the long vacation, I worked as a tour guide for US school kids on study tours of Europe. As a young adult, I became a teacher of English as a foreign language with the aim of experiencing life in diverse countries. I spent periods living and working in France, Bulgaria, Greece, Japan, Spain, Malaysia, and Tunisia.
As an older adult I still love exploring and try to travel as much as possible, although life and obligations often get in the way, so journeys are necessarily shorter and sometimes not very far afield. I now travel mostly with my husband, but have made many solo trips in the past both as a young and as an older woman.