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ADVENTUROUS Jenni Stevenson from Dorchester resigned from her job as a senior prison officer and has jetted off on a holiday of a lifetime. She is taking advantage of budget airline Ryanair's
offer to fly for £1 and she is taking 10 flights and visiting six countries over the next few weeks.
Starting from Bournemouth, the itinerary takes in Dublin, Cork, Glasgow, Paris, Madrid, Marseille, Fez in Morocco, Barcelona and Pisa.
Mrs Stevenson, who is travelling light with just one bag, plans to stay a few days in each city and sleep on camping sites.
This is her story.

The racoons and snakes of Weymouth

In the New World Portland is not an island. Dorchester is a dangerous and drug-ridden town and Weymouth is home to an $8 million wildlife centre that looks after racoons and boa constrictors.

Fez. That's Africa folks!!!

My next stop scares the hell out of me and the flight doesn't settle my nerves. As we take off and the plane is still angled at 45 degrees climbing up to 35,000 ft, several passengers stand up including the woman in the row in front of me. She opens the overhead locker. Luckily nothing falls out as my tent poles and sleeping mat are jammed into it holding everything fast.

Idiote Savon

All I really know about Marseille is that they make soap there, and that a friend who once visited it described it as 'the arse of the world'. Which perhaps explains why they make soap there.

Mad dogs and English women or ice cream , ice cream and more ice cream

Big excitement on the campsite. The 'market' otherwise known as the shop is open. Old grumpy knickers isn't there, it must be her 'top up your flaming red hair dye day'. Contrary to the name which conjures up an image of fresh flowers, floury loaves of bread and sweet smelling papaya fruit, the shop is like a museum of things they had for sale left over after the war ... with free dust and an historical sell by date. I buy a rusting tube of toothpaste and a bar of carbolic soap. I know it's for washing something, bodies, dishes, clothes, but I'm not sure which.

Madrid, it's like New York on croissants

Proffering the Google map of the location of my campsite I sit down in the metro information office and hope they speak English. It doesn't start well.

Toothbrushes, taxis and terminals

I spend five perfect blissful days in Paris and I have much to tell about it, but the Beard says I am so far behind on the blog I must move on and because I love it when he is masterful, I will.

Tent Wasteland

So what does a camp-hardy, be-rucksacked, adventurous, spirited gal like me do when lost in the woods of Paris with nighttime big bad wolves fast approaching? Easy. Phone a friendly Beard back home and ask him, coutesy of his employers, to "look up where the bloody hell this flipping campsite is then".

M is for Metro, N is for Non

Ah Paris ... got to confess it's a bit of a favourite. I get off the coach from the airport and walk down the road to see where it takes me. I turn a corner and up the hill at the end of the road, bathed in very welcome sunshine is the Arc de Triomphe.

The Scottish Blog

I have been told that I am very lucky to get a flight from Cork to Glasgow as they have now cancelled it. So I am expecting the flight to be as empty as the flight here from Dublín. It's a surprise then that it is chock a block full and very noisy.

And the Corking goes on

At about midnight as I lay shivering in the thickest and most expensive socks known to man, every piece of clothing I have with me on, and my sleeping bag pulled up right over my head like Harry Houdini about to treat the crowds to a derring-do of some sort or other involving a tightrope or a huge waterfall ... it starts to rain.