Ah, the tuk tuk trip - the adventure that started me on this path of travelling and writing. As I write this on a wet January day in 2023, it all seems so long ago, and it was. The world and I have changed a great deal since then.

It began in December 2005, when my best friend Jo, who’d spent the best part of the last four years in psychiatric institutions, asked me if I wanted to drive a tuk tuk from Bangkok to Brighton with her. A tuk tuk? From Thailand to the UK? Was Jo really better? I was working for ITV in London at the time, sharing a flat with friends - why would I give it all up to do some madcap adventure that probably wasn’t even possible?

But I did.

I took a risk.

I said YES.

And in doing so my life changed forever.

Six months later Jo and I were thundering across China’s Gobi desert in Ting Tong, our pink three-wheeled tuk tuk, heading in the general direction of England.

In 98 days of tukking, we covered 12,561 miles, two continents and 12 countries. We survived an earthquake, floods, several landslides and the odd lascivious Russian. We also set the Guinness World Record for the Longest Ever Journey by Auto-Rickshaw and raised £50,000 for Mind, the mental health charity. The following year, we were - to our enormous surprise - awarded Cosmopolitan magazine’s  ‘Fun, Fearless, Female’ Award.

I’m so glad I said yes to Jo. That journey taught me that if you’re determined, committed and willing to embrace the unknown, anything is possible. It also taught me the importance of saying yes, even if it scares you.

A book about this adventure, Tuk Tuk to the Road, was published by The Friday Project in 2007. As for Ting Tong, she’s enjoying a quiet retirement with my sister and her family in Norfolk, but may well come and live with me in the Black Mountains sometime soon. She told me she’d rather like a crack at the Gospel Pass. Jo - who went on to become a doctor - and I are still the best of friends, and have stuck with each other through darkness and light. How lucky I am to have a friend like her.