The Grey Nomads

While most of us just dream of packing up and heading off into the sunset, experienced travellers John and Jane Richardson pulled on their rucksacks and lived the dream during a life-changing eight months exploring America, Australia and Malaysia.

This is not a hurried dash from country to country, John and Jane are ‘Grey Nomads’, mature travellers wanting to shop, cook and spend time with the people and communities they interact with during their journeys.

‘Our story is quite unusual. We’re not gap year students looking for adventure or seasonal travellers looking for a quick high, but older travellers seeking to connect with the places we’ve been to and the people we’ve met. We wanted to find out about the politics, music and wildlife of the counties we visited, to talk to the people and to leave with a better understanding of our world,’ says John, who wrote the book on their UK return, basing it upon all the emails they’d sent while they were away.

Keen to use as many forms of transport as possible, they undertook two great train adventures; a memorable twenty three hours on the Californian Zephyr acrosss America and the fascinating jungle railway through the centre of Malaysia to the Islamic state of Kelantan on the border with Thailand. From encounters with bears and wolves in Yellowstone Park, to Queensland’s worst ever floods, John’s travels reward the reader with fascinating stories which are sometimes amusing and sometimes serious.

The Grey Nomads is an enchanting travelogue of life on the road for two mature travellers.

John Richardson was born in 1948, his work took him across Europe and his travels to the Far East, Australia, and extensively to North America. He is considered an expert on Greek Island hopping! He now lives in Norfolk with his wife, Jane.