Hi. I’m Angus, and no prizes for guessing that I’m Scottish – and the above picture was taken in Flensburg, Germany in Spring 2022.
Mid Argyll in Scotland is my home base now but my career in sales has taken me all over the UK, with travels to overseas conferences and exhibitions a memorable bonus.
Being ‘on the road’ since I was 18 gave me the privileged ability to travel at the expense of whichever company I was working for at the time. As well as the day to day travelling to see customers in the UK, there were also great memories visiting overseas destinations with a visit to the Jack Daniels Distillery a particular favourite.
With all of these events I always tried to add on some extra time and see, either the city I was in, or what was nearby. Bologna was a particular favourite as the Children’s Book Fair was always in the spring, it was warm, the food and wine was first class and the team I was with were great fun. It was also within a train ride to sight-see in Pisa, Florence, Venice and Rimini, an opportunity not missed, usually in the company of ‘Jones the Book’.
Incentive wins including dinner in London with Henry Cooper and his wife, a long weekend in Paris at the George V, a ten day Caribbean cruise, a long weekend in Marbella and a long weekend in Jersey were just some of the highlights. As well as these incentive prizes I was fortunate enough to travel to Nashville, Amsterdam and the Rhine region for conferences.
All of this travel with work led to holidays in Rome / Sorrento and Corfu before the oil crisis of the late 1970’s made foreign travel very expensive so we bought a Sprite Musketeer caravan and toured around Scotland before it was written off one May when a gust of wind tipped it over on the M9, near to where the Kelpies can be seen today.
The caravan was a right off so we bought a brand new Sprite Alpine and headed off for the first of many holidays to Brittany, Normandy and south as far as Bordeaux. Quite how we did it in those far off days before satnavs and mobile phones is a mystery but we did!