We sold everything and bought a one-way ticket to take our three children travelling

We sold everything and bought a one-way ticket to take our three children travelling

Dani and Tom Wooldridge spent years working to turn a 1970s house into a cherished family home after buying it around seven years ago.

Dani, 39, works as a nurse and also ran an aesthetics business, while Tom, 38, owned a construction business. They had three children, a close extended family and plenty of friends. Life was good.

But in May this year, the family of five sold their home and belongings and bought a one-way ticket to Indonesia, with everything they owned now packed into backpacks in the luggage hold.

With Olivia, 12, Morgan, seven, and four-year-old George, the Wooldridges are now planning to travel the world with no fixed end point, hoping to visit every continent.

The “amazing” food and the sunshine were an immediate bonus to their new lifestyle.

Five months into the trip, speaking by video call from the Indonesian island of Lombok, Dani and Tom talk through the choices that led them to south-east Asia.

Both had travelled for a time in their early 20s in the classic gap-year style, and they had always enjoyed holidays, especially to warm places.

Dani says: “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 went to Thailand for 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.

“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,” Tom added.

Dani says that trip prompted them to begin researching and speaking to other families who had chosen to set off.

“We made lots of lists – lots of positives, lots of negatives,” she says.

“Can we do this? 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 decided, they knew they had to be “100% committed”.

At first, Dani thought they should rent out the house “so we've got something to come back to”, but Tom wanted to sell, and they realised they did not want to leave the burden of managing it to people back home.

The boys were enthusiastic from the beginning, but the couple admit it was more difficult for their daughter.

Tom says: “Olivia was a bit nervous. She'd just started high school in the September and we left in May this year. She was very apprehensive about leaving all her friends.

“Morgan and George do mention their friends now and again but they're a bit younger so they didn't have that emotional attachment as much as Olivia.”

When they told their parents about the plan, the first reaction was: “why are you selling everything you've worked so hard to get?”

“Most people have got bets on when we're coming back,” Dani says, laughing. Tom adds: “They've all got a year each.”

After selling their house at the beginning of the year, they spent several months in rented accommodation before heading to the airport in May for the big goodbye.

Leaving was “very emotional”, Dani says.

“We were very fortunate that we had a lot of family coming to the airport with us,” adds Tom. “We'd checked our luggage in, and we got to the security gates, and that was hard.

“We were so fortunate to have a close family and friendship group as well. They're the people we miss and that's what we miss from back home, the people that were in our lives. Not so much the material things we had.”

But once the plane took off and the farewells were behind them, the excitement began.

“We remembered where we were going,” joked Tom. Even though both had been to their first stop, Bali in Indonesia, before, the culture shock still hit hard.

“It’s just everything. Your senses are just heightened. It's the smells, seeing everything around, it's so different to home.

“We went to Bali 15 years ago when it was a lot quieter,” Dani adds. “People have said how busy it is now, and it was. The first day or two was very overwhelming. Our daughter was still a bit emotional. She was up and down with things and we were all a bit jet lagged.

“We went to Uluwatu first and it has got so busy. Even us walking down a road, I was nervous. Scooters everywhere.”

But there were positives too, Tom says. “The food instantly was amazing. And the people are just beautiful, and so kind. And just to feel the heat on our skin.”

The sunshine and the sea are a major attraction for the family, who do not miss the “grey and dark and wet”.

They moved around different parts of the island, leaving the beaches in the south to climb volcanic Mount Batur in the north, and spending time in the inland cultural village of Ubud. They then island-hopped east across the Indonesian archipelago before returning to Lombok for a second stay.

“We were moving around quite a bit,” Dani says. “So each time it was almost like that feeling of going home because we were packing up, but we weren't going home. I think it took us months to really think, wow, we're not actually going home.”

Leaving the UK has not meant giving up education, Dani stresses.

“Even though we want our children to experience the world and have that kind of real world learning, we have said we also want them to have opportunities. So if they want to go to university and be a doctor or a nurse or whatever career path they want to go down, we still want them to have those opportunities,” she says.

They brought a “huge bag” of textbooks and workbooks recommended by teachers before they left, and they are following the UK curriculum. Olivia has an online maths tutor, who was previously head of maths at her high school in Rhondda Cynon Taf and had also taught Tom at the same school.

The boys have a tutor who teaches the primary curriculum and does English and some science with Olivia.

Although the biggest downside is missing family back home, Dani and Tom say the cultural experiences, the confidence the children have already gained, the chance to meet such a wide range of people and the opportunity to live so much of life outdoors outweigh the negatives.

The family is due to move on to Malaysia after five months travelling around Indonesia, most recently in Lombok for a second stay, where the children have been attending a world schooling centre that the couple described as a “lovely routine” with amazing friends.

After initially bringing “way too much stuff”, they have given possessions away to locals they have met on their travels and reduced everything to two large 120-litre backpacks for the parents and two 100-litre rolling packs, including one filled with educational materials.

“The kids will have virtually nothing on their backs, just maybe a really small backpack to get on the plane,” says Tom.

“We thought the kids would be excited at carrying their backpacks. Yeah, they're not onboard with that,” laughs Dani.

In Malaysia, they plan to visit an orangutang sanctuary in Borneo and make another longer stop at a world-schooling centre so the children can spend more time with peers.

After that they will head to Thailand, where both Dani's mum and Tom's parents will visit separately, and after deciding on a good place to celebrate Dani's 40th birthday, they will continue through Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

That means the next year is “roughly” mapped out. They have allowed for contingencies and emergencies – Tom has already had to fly home once for a funeral – but they still do not have a firm destination in mind once they leave Asia, apart from a likely short trip home to see family.

“We're going to do as much as we feel we want to in a continent and then go to the next one,” explains Tom. “Just keep going for as long as we can, and want to. If at some point we don't want to then we'll have explored a lot of places to pick somewhere to stop.”

It is, in many ways, the ultimate bucket list. But if they had to choose one destination above all others, what would it be?

For Dani, it is an African safari. “I've always wanted to see Africa and I've never been. That's always been on my list.”

Tom says: “Tahiti is coming to my head. That's with my surfing background. The place looks beautiful. And we will be going there. I'm 40 next December so...”