THIS LIFE Stef Burgon and Simon Hunt

The 16th-century Kilmartin Castle in Argyll has been restored by this enterprising couple, who have filled it with treasures from their world travels and turned it into a boutique B&B

- Catherine Coyle

“I think it was Maya Angelou who said, ‘People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ ” Australian-born Simon Hunt and Stef Burgon, who is originally from Newcastle, are recounting how they came to be living in a castle on the west coast of Scotland. They met in Dubai around seven years ago, having both moved there for work. Stef was presenting a breakfast radio show and working as a travel journalist and Simon, creative director at an ad agency – though he always had other ‘schemes’ on the go, as his dad used to say. For instance, he set up a sandboard company, ABOVE sandboards, in Dubai. Sandboarding, if you’ve never come across it, is like snowboarding, only on dunes rather than down snow-clad mountains. When Simon first tried it, he was handed a snowboard to ride. “I couldn’t believe that in a country covered in sand, no one had made a board specifically for this sport,” he recalls.

He set to work, coming up with a prototype, went into production and sold a thousand in his first year. His board designs are currently the fastest-selling sandboards in the world.

Like the entrepreneurial Simon, Stef isn’t one to sit still. It’s one of the reasons the pair get on so well – their voracious appetite for life is intoxicating. “I think we were in Dubai at the right time,” she remarks. “It’s not the same now, but when we were there, budgets were huge and you could dream big and make it happen in your job because the money was there.”