As I suspect that no-one will really read this I can ramble a bit and tell you a long and pretty ancient story.
In the mid Eighties I was inspired by a man, he travelled to far off countries and was sponsered by a mysterious Nuffield thing. I suspected that this may be something like the Freemasons. I mean why would anyone pay you to travel?
Shortly after this Gordon Fisher, as this was his name, helped me to apply for a trip to travel to the other side of the world. I thought this was very helpful of him not realising that it may have been a ploy to get me away from his 16 year old daughter. I realise this now that I nearly have 16 year old daughters of my own mothered by Liz his lovely daughter (my wife- I did it legally). There may be a lesson there, but that is for another time.
My trip to NZ was through the YFC and although this trip defined a lot of my farming life since, I think that at 21 I was a bit young to fully appreciate what I was seeing and what I could learn from travel, in those days Steinlager as apposed to Dryboroughs heavy was a big learning curve...
Ten years, a marriage, a farm change and a good few years later I decided it was time to "learn" some more. I wrote my application for my Nuffield Scholarship and was about to send it off when the dreaded FAM attacked our area, this essentially scuppered my idea to apply and events conspired to mean that, although I was busy at work, my world tour was postponed...indefinately.
If anyone out there has ever completed the Worshipful Company of Farmers Course they will know that by doing this in 2003 I managed to use my time wisely while secretely planning to tour the world again.
In the meantime family life was great fun, its great watching your kids develop, but now after attempts at cheese, yoghurt and compost production (some of this more succesful than others) and a visit locally to a Nuffield promotional meeting, here I am again only this time I am off on my tour for real.
Liz has given me her blessing, which is good becauseIi will leave her in the lurch a bit, and Harriet and Rachael seem at ease with allowing me to go (at least they have written me a shopping list of duty free items to bring back- I think this may be love of some sort) I am ready to go off on my own (there has already been a brief tour of Washington and Pennsylvannia, but go to http://www.nuffieldscholar.org.uk/ for details of this)
I will promise to update this as regularly as I can. next time I will be letting you know what I have done over the summer here in dear old blighty.
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