Tims family special: reports and pictures from their trip

It is 17 months since we packed up, left London, and took the tiny first steps of our round-the-world trip, three children in tow. Here we are now, surprised to be back. Sheltering in Cornwall from the British summer, after all those months in the sun.

We have scoured the world in our hunt for a place to stop for good, looking for something at the very least foreign, hot and different, and have found ourselves coming home instead, with an unexpected appreciation of what it offers, eyes open to the things which we love and have missed. Family, friends, rolling hills and damp green woods, castles, history. John Lewis and Tesco. Safety.

No, it’s not perfect, we know that, and a lot has changed while we’ve been away. The weather is still awful, of course. But this is as good a place as any for the children to grow up, all things considered. And we have considered all things, believe me.

It has changed our lives completely, which was our intention, but not in the ways that we expected. We thought that we would be moving to a dim and distant corner of Africa or maybe Australia, hardy expatriates, running a wacky business of our own somewhere wild. But splendid isolation would have meant far-away boarding school for our children, Gregor, 10, Mima, 8, and Kinvy, 6. We tried hard, but in the end we couldn’t convince ourselves that anywhere was worth that.

So instead we have bought a crumbling old house in Dorset. It’s just about quirky enough to make up for the rain. Nick is going back to work in London, but he’s reinventing himself, reinvigorated. Ambitious again and taking on something new and challenging. Time out can focus the mind. He has even started cooking and child-minding, with increasing good humour. We’re back, but we’re doing things differently.

Gap years are good for the soul, so we will have to go again. But it will be 12 years until we leave again, since the children need to go to school and be conventionalised a little. With this in mind, we’ve bought them a dog, which seems to send out a distinctly settled-down vibe. Sensibly rooting.

The children have changed a great deal. They were all shy when we left, but now they are confident and articulate, comfortable with adults. And broad-minded and adaptable. Slightly wild and eccentric, yes, but we quite like that. They still argue all the time, but they use bigger words when they do it. Babysitting freaks them out, though – they have forgotten that parents sometimes do things without their children.

We’ve found them a school, Sherborne Preparatory, happily located in the heart of Middle England but brimming with teachers from New Zealand and Africa. What could be better? The children look strange in their uniforms, tough brown toes squeezed into unfamiliar shoes. Yes, it’s going to be a challenge, reacquainting them with homework, timetables and exams. But if they have fallen behind as far as the national curriculum is concerned, they have made it up with life experience and we are certain that their time out will ultimately help their progress through education, not hold them back.

Stopping and staying is going to be hard, maybe more for me than for the others. But we regret nothing. The whole experience was utterly awesome. We have, as we intended, jumped off the treadmill and had a good look around at the world outside. And it was as great as we thought it would be.

The days of packing and moving, the boring days, the scary days, are all irrelevant and forgotten. The 3,000 photographs clogging up this laptop will make it into an album one day, but we don’t really need those pictures to bring back the memories. There’s plenty to talk about. We’ve got our next holiday to plan, after all.
Rachel Tims

Dismantling a London life and City career was a big deal. A leap into many unknowns, not least financial, and the prospect of over a year, 24/7, with the family I loved but had only really seen at weekends and during the frustratingly short holidays. But we'd talked about doing this for 13 years. It all proved to be the best thing we could have done.

The message to any father – do it if you can. At the right time, the children old enough to appreciate it, strong enough to handle it, not too old to jeopardise their schooling. Otherwise they would have entered teenagedom with their dad a rather distant figure. Now, my idea of a good time is first and foremost being with them.

What would we have done differently? Not much, actually. We had to play their resilience by ear and would now make it even more full-on. Maybe less South Africa, more remote Africa, such as Ethiopia or Gabon, staying at fewer than 130 places, balancing it with showing them India or China.

We would go back pretty much everywhere. Our favourite country is still Kenya, our favourite place the Mathews Range, where we’ve ended up getting a little house. Close call with the Kunene river below the Serra Cafema mountains in Angola, and New Zealand’s Doubtful Sound. If I had to choose the most disconcerting moment, probably a serious elephant charge in Etosha, although the nine-hour drive to rush Kinvara to Swakopmund hospital and my abseil over an unexpected overhang at Table Mountain were right up there. The winner of grossest meal was easy – half-cooked female baboon courtesy of the Hadze tribe in Tanzania.

The grass isn’t greener in Lamu, Camp’s Bay or Bondi. We suspected it would be when we left and it probably will be one day, but we’ve got unfinished business in England and reckon we’ve come closer to working out how to do it. The trip was worth that alone.
Nick Tims

Tims top tips

1 Be as adventurous as you dare. Children are tougher than you think.
2 Don’t let other people talk you out of it. They’ll have their own reasons for trying to.
3 Be informed about medical issues and safety. Consult travel experts, not just your GP’s surgery (try www.travelclinicroyalfree.com). Use Foreign Office advice and make sure you have bullet-proof insurance.
4 Children can take highly effective antimalarial medication once they weigh more than 11kg (we used paediatric Malarone).
5 It is not illegal to take the children out of school and abroad for a year. The education authority has no jurisdiction while you are away.
6 Keep schoolwork to a minimum. It is less important than the experiences you are having.
7 Allow flexibility for last-minute adventures.
8 Longer stops of a week or so offer a chance to rest.
9 Travel light and ship home any surplus. Try to leave some dip-into luggage at hubs such as Nairobi or Sydney.
10 Books, pens and paper are essential entertainment tools. Believe it or not, PlayStations and iPods are not.

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