How a Girl from Yorkshire Ended Up Travelling the World and Creating Books for Children
I grew up in Leeds, West Yorkshire. A bookish, quiet girl who didn't quite fit in but had a big imagination and an even bigger curiosity about the world beyond her street.
I always knew I wanted to see it. I just didn't know how.
The trip that started everything
In my early twenties I did something that felt quite brave at the time — I packed a bag and went to France on my own to work for Eurocamp. No friends, no plan, just a willingness to see what happened.
Then I went to Majorca and did it all again.
What happened was brilliant. I worked as a children's entertainer, running activities for kids aged three to ten — sometimes a hundred children at a time. We made all our activities up as we went along. It was chaotic and creative and joyful, and somewhere in those sun-drenched, slightly mad summer seasons, two things took root: a love of travel, and a deep understanding of what makes children light up.
India — the trip that changed everything
A few years later I met Mark, who is now my husband. We went to India together for six months. Mark bought a motorbike. We travelled the whole country on it.
I have never experienced anything like India. The sights, the smells, the sounds, the people. It got under my skin in a way nowhere else ever had. I flew home. Mark drove.
We knew, even then, that this was just the beginning.
The pub conversation that changed our lives
We carried on working — Mark as a manager for the Royal Horticultural Society, me in learning and development for a big organisation where I designed and delivered training courses, worked all over the country, and genuinely loved my job and my team.
Then the company went through a restructure. And Mark and I happened to be in India at the time — on motorbikes, riding up through the Himalayas to Ladakh, climbing to 5,600 metres on the world's highest motorable road. We saw the Dalai Lama. We rode through places so remote and so beautiful that words don't quite do it.
And somewhere up there, above the clouds, I decided I didn't want to go back to normal.
When we landed home I took Mark to the pub, bought him a beer, and said — I think we should take the redundancy money and go and do stuff.
It took him a couple of days. But he got there.
Twelve years of living in the world's most beautiful places
In 2010 we went back to Eurocamp — this time as a couple. We spent five years in France and seven in Switzerland, living and working in places most people only visit on holiday. Our seasons got longer, our skills grew, and our winters became our adventures.
Over those twelve years we went to Southeast Asia twice — Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Sri Lanka. We rode motorbikes the length of Vietnam. We hired a campervan in Patagonia. We drove through Mexico, dipped into Belize and Guatemala, swam with whale sharks. We went to South Africa twice in a 4x4 with a roof tent, visited Botswana, white water rafted the Zambezi. We went back to Africa, back to Asia, back to India — Northeast India, Nagaland, Nepal. We did a grand tour of Europe in a little VW campervan all the way to Greece.
In the middle of all of this, Mark was diagnosed with cancer. He had an operation. He didn't need further treatment. But it made us even more certain — you don't wait. You go. You do the thing.
57 countries. 5 continents. A life that sometimes feels like a dream.
So where do the books come in?
Here's the thing about travelling the world for twenty-odd years — you start to see it differently. You notice the children at the airport, faces pressed against the glass watching the planes. You remember being that young girl in Leeds with a big imagination and no idea how to feed it.
And you think — what if children didn't have to wait until they were grown up to fall in love with the world? What if we could bring the world to them, right now, in a way that was fun and colourful and full of wonder?
That's why I created Colour the World.
Not just to keep kids entertained — but to open their eyes to the extraordinary, beautiful, diverse world around them. Because a child who loves the world will grow up wanting to protect it, celebrate it and share it with others.
I'm 53. I'm based in Yorkshire. I'm still travelling — Istanbul, Georgia and India are next on the list. And I'm only just getting started.
This kind of feels normal to me now. I forget, when I talk to people, how much I've actually done. It's only when I stop and write it all down that I realise — oh. That's quite a life.
And every single bit of it is woven into Colour the World.
Curious children become kind adults. 🌍
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