COULD YOU LEAVE EVERYTHING BEHIND?

Meet the globetrotters who've swapped home comforts for dream lives abroad

- HELEN RENSHAW

‘I’ll keep travelling as long as I can’

Camilla Randell, 54, from Kent, currently works as a housekeeper in Switzerland. 

I’ve always loved travelling. My favourite childhood book was a Reader’s Digest atlas: I’d pore over maps of distant landscapes, dreaming of visiting exciting places. When I was 28, my boyfriend and I decided to leave our jobs and head to Greece to pick fruit. I wanted to work to live, not live to work. We travelled for two years and, by the time we returned to the UK, I’d learnt some life lessons.

BIG DECISIONS 

I didn’t want children and knew my relationship was over. I went to visit a friend who was living in an alternative community in Holland, and stayed for five happy years, living in a little wooden hut with no electricity or running water. I worked in catering and had loads of fun. But it was hard, and in 2005, I went to see a friend running a bar in Tenerife. I found a job at a Spanish restaurant in the hills. I worked there for many years, becoming manager, and bought a flat. I was 40, and it was the first time I’d put down roots. I still went on adventures, and for the next 10 years, travelled extensively in Mexico, Peru, Australia, and India. When the restaurant closed, I trained as an English second language teacher and was offered a job in Moscow. After that, I volunteered with refugees in Kathmandu. It was great, but I needed money, so when a friend offered me a job in Switzerland, I accepted. Now I’m a housekeeper in a lovely house near Geneva.