IT TOOK me 56 years to leave my homeland for the first time and order food in pigeon French or drink Guinness and share yarns with a couple of old Irishmen in a Killarney pub.
To the experiences I’ve had standing in the blues, the yellows, the reds and purples of Australia, I can now add swimming in the Mediterranean, taking a photo with a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and an Aston Martin in the one frame, standing below the Eiffel Tower, boating along the Seine, standing on the boundary at Lord’s, crossing Abbey Road, freezing in wind and rain in the Scottish highlands and standing in a lonely field in northern France where my grandfather was felled by machine gun fire in 1918 – among other things.
Dreams are rarely fulfilled simply by wishes and ours could not have been realised without the outstanding work of some wonderful people.
Thanks to Candice Liddle at Tamworth’s Escape Travel, the expertise of Darren Paff, who took my wife’s crippled back from hospital and put it on a plane to Europe in just 12 months and the amazing enthusiasm of our kids who watched their inheritance being frittered away as their parents went down the hippie trail in France and the UK.
We all should be so lucky. In the end though, Dorothy was right.
I had such a good time I set up a website to show all the details, yarns, photos and videos. It’s at www.travelswithpetensue.com
PETER LANGSTON
TAMWORTH
