Living their best lives – Tony & Anita

Globetrotters Tony Meyrick, 63, and his wife, Anita, 62, of Millbrook Village, have been making the most of their retirement by travelling around the globe. Here, Tony explains why he loves exploring the world, from scuba diving in New Zealand to island hopping in the Seychelles.

I’ve always travelled. It stretches you emotionally and mentally.

Six years ago, Anita and I bought a condominium in Florida, so we could spend the winters over there. Then, after returning to the UK from the U.S, we would spend about a month going around northern Europe in our touring caravan. We’d go to places like Alsace, Geneva, and the Alps. We also had a group of friends who we used to go sailing with in Turkey.

After those trips, we’d spend most of July and half of August in the UK and would then quite often take the caravan to South West France for a month.

We weren’t spending much time in the UK, and it seemed crazy to have a four-bedroom detached house near London. That’s why we decided to move to an apartment at Millbrook, because we wanted something smaller. And we knew the village team would be keeping an eye on our home while we were away.

We also have an investment with Holiday Property Bond (HPB), which has holiday accommodation around the UK and Europe. Last October (2019), we had a week in Pembrokeshire with HPB.

One of our favourite holidays was to the Seychelles, where we did a multi-island hop. It was a lovely place to relax and switch off.

And over the years I’ve done a lot of scuba diving around the world. One of my best dives was at Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand, which was fantastic.

Our travel has been affected by Covid-19. We had to come back early from our condo in the U.S in March because of the pandemic. Since then, we’ve not been going away. The thought of going abroad and suddenly finding ourselves in isolation for two weeks puts us off.

But here at Millbrook we’re being active. We both have bikes, and I did a lot of cycling over the summer. We also went for walks and drove to the coast. Millbrook is an excellent place to live.