About us

We are Bill and Rosemary, both retired and about to embark on our second overland adventure, this time to South America. To the envy of our daughter and son in law, we plan to spend the coming months of our journey living in our Land Rover  ‘Moby’, using campsites and also camping wild, whenever possible.

Travel has always been in our blood. As a child, Rosemary was inspired by a friend of the family’s tales and photos of their life in the Middle East. Bill lived in Malta, Singapore and Gibraltar as a boy, due to his father’s job as a deep sea diver. In our early married years we always dreamt of getting an old Land Rover and exploring Africa.

We were fortunate to have the opportunity to live and work in Kuwait. During that time we spent most of our weekends enjoying the enormity, silence and space of the desert and our stay there also gave us the chance to explore more of the Gulf as far as Oman.  We returned to the UK in 1986 with 2 rescued cats and a very special arab stallion we bought from the Bedouin. Getting these much loved animals back to England was a story in itself, our horse being the most difficult. We finally resorted to driving him across Saudi and into Jordan, where we then lived for 6 months with him. We will always be indebted to the many people who became involved in helping us to finally fly him back to England.

Once back in the UK we settled down to some serious work. During that time, however, we never lost sight of our original African dream. Our bookshelves were full of other people’s adventures on this continent and we couldn’t wait to add our own! However, it wasn’t until 2005 that we had the freedom to turn our dream into reality.

We sold our house and put all our belongings into storage and took off in ‘Moby’ for nearly 2 years around Africa ( see our African Travel Diary for more details). Before leaving, we decided that our trip should also be used to try and help with the amazing work of a local charity that we had discovered, called Starfish Malawi. At the time of our visit to Salima in Malawi, we were able to help at Kaputu School which was being rebuilt at the time.

               

We also spent some time at the Glad Tidings Orphan Care, where over 240 orphans are now cared for.

  

  

Since 2003 when Starfish first began life following a visit to Malawi by its founder, Chris Knott, the work of this charity has broadened to include projects linked to education, health and sanitation, HIV and AIDS, farming and vocational training.It was a wonderful trip for us throughout the whole of this amazing continent, the people, animals and spectacular landscapes leaving lasting memories.

Since our return from Africa we have been leading a nomadic life, spending the winters in France house sitting for friends.

We loved our time in France and were nearly tempted to make one of the wonderful, stone houses our home. However, we have now set our sights on settling in Suffolk when we return from our latest trip.