I am British by birth, born 9th Feb 1956 in Rye in Sussex.
Since August 2006 I have been married to Jo, a Canadian!
We lived in Spain from 2004 until 2019. In 2020 we moved to Canada.
I have a daughter from my last marriage called Sophie who sadly I have not seen since my divorce in 1999.
I have always been a keen traveller, and have lived in, worked in or visited 40 countries around the world. I used to travel a lot with my work, but this meant seeing more hotel rooms and offices than the sights and people of the countries.
In 1997 after my divorce I retired from work and started travelling a lot more. Between the start of 1997 and mid 2004, I rarely stayed in one place for more than 3 months.
I support myself, my family and our travelling by building websites. On some of the trips I took my cameras, on others I was travelling light, so there are no pictures.
I spent most of 1998 and 1999 in The UK, but also spent time in The Netherlands, France and the USA.
In 2000 I was in the USA again for over 3 months, Greece, The Netherlands, Dubai, The Maldives and 3 months in Australia.
In 2001 it was back to Europe, spending most of the year in The Netherlands, France and Spain, with visits to see the family in the UK.
In 2002 it was a quiet year just spending time in the Netherlands and Italy. At the end of the year Jo and I went to Canada to spend time with her family.
2003 I spent time in various countries in Europe.
A New Chapter in Europe
2004 Jo and I decided to start a life together in Spain. We stayed in Spain until 2019, we were finding it more and more difficult to make Jo a legal resident so we decided we would save and move to Canada. 2019 was a bad year for us, I broke my ankle in Australia in January, despite Jo paying thousands of Euros in taxes she still could not become a legal resident, then in October our home was flooded and we lost a lot of our belongings. In November Jo flew to Canada and we bought a house where we will move to after our holiday finishes in May 2020.
2005 we stayed in Spain and worked on our house, visiting the towns and cities along the coast.
2006 We got married in August in Gibraltar. We headed for Canada in Mid December to spend Christmas and New Year with Jo's family.
2007 We headed to the UK in the first week of January and saw some friends and my father, then headed on out to Auastralia. We stayed in Oz until the last week of March. The rest of the year we just stayed in Spain and worked and visited towns on the Costa Blanca, Madrid and a visit back to Gibraltar to get some paperwork.
2008 We stayed in Spain.
2009 Still living in Spain, trying to survive the economic downturn.
2010 Struggling along in Spain, very little work available, income down to 30% of 2005 levels.
2011 Horrible year, no longer able to afford the mortgage - in 2005 it was 1200€ per month, now its just under 2000€ a month. We stopped trying to pay in May and lost the house in August. We are now renting another house for 800€ which means we can afford to eat again! Most of the Brits we knew have given up and gone home, 3 years ago we knew over 100 Brits living in this town, now we only know about 20!. We are going to Germany for a week just before Christmas. The trip is a present from our friends Dave & Nette.
2013 We went to Malta on a dive holiday
2014 Jo and I went to The Philippines
2015 We went to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, Malta, Gibraltar and Thailand
2016 We were in Thailand on New years day and moved on to The Philippines on January 6th, we will be in Malta in September and in Lanzarote in November.
2017 In October we did a roadtrip across Canada (6240kms in 16 days). In December into Feb 2018 We visited Thailand, The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Maldives and Singapore.
2018 This was our biggest trip so far: Indonesia - Bali, Malaysia, Indonesia - Lembeh, Australia, Mauritius, South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya.
We Move to Canada
We had a long term plan that we would move from Spain and live in Canada, so that Jo could be closer to her family and live in a country where she was legal.
In September 2019 we had a huge flood that destroyed half our belongings, so we decided to trash our long term plan and move to Canada ASAP.
In October 2019 Jo flew to Nova Scotia and hired a car and drove up through New Brunswick looking for a property we could afford to buy for cash. She found one in the village of McAdam that was habitable but needed modernizing. She bought it there and then and we started planning our move.
By mid December we had everything either packed and in storage with the moving company or sold, and house sitters moved into the house to look after the dogs and house until our planned return in late March 2020. We were returning to have a big farewell party for all our friends.
We flew out to Bali and started our holiday, then moved on to Fiji at the start of January, then on to Australia lat January, friends came out to meet us in Australia to go on a special part of the holiday, a dive trip to Chuuk Lagoon - Well suddenly the world went mad! Covid was closing countries everywhere. The States of Micronesia slammed their borders shut, so we lost our planned holiday there. I made some phone calls and got us all on flights to Indonesia so we did some more diving there. When Indonesia started closing down we flew to The Philippines and dived in Boracay and Dauin and Cebu. Then The Philippines started closing down, we started sarching for flights back to Spain or Canada, but every flight we booked got cancelled as first Hong Kong, then Singapore closed meaning that it was hard to get connecting flights. We moved to a hotel right beside the airportwhich was still open, they told us we had a week before they were closing down. We went to the airport every day checking for any flights to Spain or Canada. On day 6 we managed to get on a flight to South Korea, then on to New York, then to Montreal and eventually to St.John in New Brunswick. We were so lucky we had bought the house, as we had a place we could self isolate in for the mandatory 2 weeks.
In September 2021 we moved from McAdam to the historic seaside town of St. Andrews in NB.
On fathers day 2021 Kevin started the process of adopting me as his father. In 2022 I attended court with him and the adoption was confirmed.
In 2022 we went on our first dive holiday since Covid on the island of Bali.
In 2023 we met up with our friends Jo and John and went diving in Lembeh, Bunken, Bangka and the Maluku Islands in Indonesia, then another week in Bali on the way back.
In 2024 we went on our first ever cruise, sadly it was not to our liking. We tend to be very busy on holiday, wheras cruising was just rest, eat and drink. in November we went to Bali again with some friends from our village.
My hobbies include:
- Scuba diving, which I started learning in the Maldives, and got my diving licenses in Australia. Many of my pictures are devoted to diving trips and underwater pictures.
- Photography, I am just starting to do more land photography after leaving my cameras in storage for many of my trips. Most of the pictures we have taken since 2014 have been of the underwater world.
- Collecting crystals, I prefer Swarovski crystals and have dozens. I neglected these for some time while travelling, and have only recently started to add to the collection again.
- Partying - we love a good party and we arrange about 20 a year for anything from 20 to 150 people. Summer BBQ´s, Cocktail parties, fancy dress parties, bouncy castles, you name it we do it!
- Visiting theme parks. I love them, and visit them wherever I find one. Its good to be a big kid sometimes.
- Designing and building websites.