Meet the globetrotters who’ve swapped home comforts for dream lives abroad
WORDS: HELEN RENSHAW
‘I’ll keep travelling as long as I can’
Camilla Randell, 54, from Kent, currently works as a housekeeper in Switzerland.
I’ve always loved travelling. My favourite childhood book was a Reader’s Digest atlas: I’d pore over maps of distant landscapes, dreaming of visiting exciting places. When I was 28, my boyfriend and I decided to leave our jobs and head to Greece to pick fruit. I wanted to work to live, not live to work. We travelled for two years and, by the time we returned to the UK, I’d learnt some life lessons.
BIG DECISIONS
I didn’t want children and knew my relationship was over. I went to visit a friend who was living in an alternative community in Holland, and stayed for five happy years, living in a little wooden hut with no electricity or running water. I worked in catering and had loads of fun. But it was hard, and in 2005, I went to see a friend running a bar in Tenerife. I found a job at a Spanish restaurant in the hills. I worked there for many years, becoming manager, and bought a flat. I was 40, and it was the first time I’d put down roots. I still went on adventures, and for the next 10 years, travelled extensively in Mexico, Peru, Australia, and India. When the restaurant closed, I trained as an English second language teacher and was offered a job in Moscow. After that, I volunteered with refugees in Kathmandu. It was great, but I needed money, so when a friend offered me a job in Switzerland, I accepted. Now I’m a housekeeper in a lovely house near Geneva.
There are downsides to this lifestyle. I’ve felt lonely at times, but I have so many friends all over the world so I’m never alone for long. I do worry about my mum – my only tie in the UK – but she’s very independent. I’ll keep travelling as long as I can – I can’t imagine stopping!
‘Living the best of both worlds’
Francesca Sullivan, 57, lives between Surrey and Cairo.
No one could have guessed from my childhood in leafy Buckinghamshire that I’d travel the world as a belly dancer. My parents took us around Europe in a camper van when I was 11, and I loved it. It made me want to explore, and in my teens and early 20s, I chased adventure at every opportunity, travelling in Majorca, Cairo and the South Pacific. I became hooked on adventure, and after finishing a degree in photography, I went to Morocco.
It was a life-changing trip because there I saw my first ever belly dancer. As she swayed to the Arabian music, I fell in love with the who
