Our Journey Since 2002 (updated Mar '21)

My name is Doug Duckworth and I live with my partner Sue Goodman.  This blog is about our journey through life since we gave up our jobs in the UK in 2002, sold our house in London and sailed away in our small yacht "La Fulica".  It's been an interesting road so far and has led to some unexpected places.

After we left London in July 2002 we sailed through the French canals and rivers until we reached the Mediterranean.  In 2003 we sailed around the coast of Italy and the islands of Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily.  We spent the winter of 2003/4 in Rome and in August 2004 we bought a small stone farmhouse and olive grove in Puglia in southern Italy.  Since then we have used our home in Italy as a base while doing different jobs around the world, including Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo.

In 2011 I trained as a Humanist celebrant and since 2014 I have been conducting funeral, wedding and naming ceremonies in the UK and Italy.  After my dad died in 2015 we used the proceeds from selling his little bungalow to buy an apartment in Newark in the UK in 2016, so that we could use it as a second home and a base for my celebrancy work.

In 2018 we decided to sell our house in Italy and in December that year we moved permanently back to the UK.  Then in 2019 we sold our apartment and bought a house in Newark, which is now our home base.

I started this blog in July 2010 and have updated it regularly since then.

I have incorporated some newsletters and other material I wrote earlier in our journey.  There's a gap for most of 2006 to 2009, which was a period when I guess I was struggling a bit with depression, writing this blog was one of the steps I took to get out of it.