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The Author
1969 — 1983
A childhood collected in passport stamps
Born with what she calls an incurable fascination for other people's countries and cultures, Nichola spent her early years in a farming village north of Lisbon, then went on to Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian jungle, and the townships beyond Kruger National Park — long before "gap year" was a phrase anyone used.
Those three journeys, taken before she turned fifteen, planted a question she'd spend the next twenty-five years trying to answer: what would it take to see the world properly, not just visit it?
Architecture → Interior Design
The career that almost held her back
Nichola trained and qualified as an architect in London and Hampshire, before finding her true calling in interior design. It was, by her own account, the first job she genuinely loved — which made it all the harder to walk away from at forty, when the pull to travel finally became impossible to ignore.
She asked her employers for two or three months' leave. They couldn't spare her that long — so she handed in her notice instead, sold the car, let the house, and left.
"I was very fortunate to have had these opportunities and to have travelled so extensively at such an early age — but as much as I always had the desire to travel more, life then started to get in the way."
— from the introduction to Jam Jam!
Life After Jam Jam
A partner who caught the same bug
Four years after returning to the UK, Nichola met Brendan — and a year later they were married. He shared her love of travelling, walking and scuba diving, and together they've since explored Zanzibar and Pemba, Tonga, the Ionian Islands and Morocco.
Where Jam Jam! ends, their story together begins — and it's taken them somewhere just as far from an ordinary life as the rucksack once did.