I have been travelling all my life - at 15 I rode on my friend's scooter up the British Isles from the Sussex coast to the Scottish Highlands, followed the following year when I was 15 and she 17 when we went round Europe on her ancient Frances Barnet motorbike. Our budget on both trips was a pound a day each and that included petrol!!!!

At university I got the travel bug badly and signed on with an agency in London to work "anywhere abroad" in the vacations and worked in embassies, theme parks, ranches etc. At 19 I travelled 19,000 miles around America , Mexico and Canada mostly on a greyhound bus, largely on my own, meeting up with ftriends and relatives on the way. On graduating I worked in television and Fleet Street and as well as travelling for work, volunteered for insane assignments nobody else fancied, such as white water rafting on the Bio-Bio in Chile (which at the time was the world's most dangerous navigable river) and camel trekking in the Sahara.. Since marrying and becoming a mother I no longer travel as such but take luxury holidays and often revisit many of the places where as a student I lived on air, but now in some style, as my husband does not believe in roughing it. We often write up our travels for national newspapers and magazines, but also travel just for fun. He's dragged me a poker cruise but I've never managed to persuade him to trek in the Himalayas in Tibet - or do a horseback Safari in Africa - so I guess these are trips I'll have to do alone. We're planning a four month sabbatical in New Zealand next year - a country we both love and we'll be hiring a motorhome and I'm looking forward to sizzling bacon for breakfast as the sun comes up. My favourite city for a weekend is Venice (out of season or in the festival) while I could happily live in NZ, Canada or Italy - but not Aus, for much as I love the country, I am very wary of all those nasty creatures that live there.