Dani and Tom Wooldridge worked hard to transform a 1970s house into a beloved family home after they bought it about seven years ago. Dani, 39, a nurse, also ran an aesthetics business while Tom, 38, had a construction business. Three children, a close extended family and lots of friends.
Yet in May this year, the five of them sold their possessions and home, and bought a one-way ticket heading for Indonesia, with the only things they owned in the world now stowed in backpacks in the luggage compartment. With Olivia, 12, Morgan, seven, and four-year-old George, the Woolridges are planning to travel the world, with no endpoint in sight, hoping to see every continent. Five months in, over a video call from the Indonesian island of Lombok, Dani and Tom explain the decisions which have brought them to the shores of south-east Asia.
Both of them had gone travelling for a period of time in their early 20s, a classic gap-year style experience, and had enjoyed taking holidays, particularly to sunny destinations. Dani said: "It was always a conversation we had but once you start having kids and you've got the mortgage and everything like that it's kind of, 'oh it's not the right time'." But nearly two years ago, the family took a holiday to Thailand over Christmas. "We were fortunate enough to have a month over there, travelled round with the kids and obviously they were almost two years younger than they are now, and managed really well.
Tom added: "It all went really smoothly and it was great seeing the kids experience a completely different world to what we'd all grown up. It just felt so great exploring with them. Dani said that sparked their interest to start researching and meeting other families who had decided to jet off.
"We made lots of lists - lots of positives, lots of negatives," she said. How are we still going to educate our children? We had a home, we had our businesses, we had careers.
What do we do about all that?" Once they made the decision, they knew they had to be "100% committed". Dani thought at first they should rent their house out "so we've got something to come back to" but Tom wanted to sell, and the couple realised they didn't want to leave the responsibility of managing it to people back home. The boys were excited about the idea from the start but the couple admit it was harder for their daughter.
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