Travelling the world is the best education
When SUE COWLEY took her children out of school on a six-month adventure, friends and family thought it was a mid-life crisis. She tells us how she proved them wrong
SUE COWLEY could only look on in horror as the train doors closed and her son Alvie, 11, who was pressed up against the other side of the glass, disappeared into the distance. As she stood with her partner and daughter on the platform at a train station in rural China, Sue says she can still remember the panic she felt as she tried to work out what to do.
“The doors snapped shut before the rest of us could get on the train. There was no way of opening them and the train pulled away. I couldn’t believe what was happening,” she says.
Luckily, another train arrived almost immediately and Sue was reunited with her son at the next stop but she knew how dangerous the situation had been.
“I don’t think I took a breath until I found him at the next stop,” says Sue, 50, who lives near Bristol with partner Frank, 50, an accountant, Alvie, now 14 and daughter Edite, 11. “Thankfully Alvie was unfazed but I was in a complete panic,” she adds.
Sue and her family were on a six-month adventure, travelling across Europe and China, after Sue made the controversial decision to take her young children out of school.
“Some people said I was having a mid-life crisis,” says Sue. “They asked why on earth I would want to spend that amount of time in a car with the kids. But the rest said how jealous they were.”
Others, she says, questioned the legality of taking the children out of school.
“It’s not the norm for most people. But actually there is no legal requirement for your children to be in school,” says Sue.
“When children turn five they have to be educated full-time. What that looks like and where that takes place is completely up to the parents.”
LOOKING for something more than the school system could offer, Sue decided that she wanted her children to experience the world.
“It was a rebellion of sorts,” explains Sue, a trained teacher who now writes about education. “I wanted to explore a different way of learning.”
The trip took three months to plan and, Sue admits, hundreds of arguments about where to go and what their savings would allow.
But in February 2014 they were ready and set off from Dover.
Sue filled the car with non-fiction books about the nature and history of the places they planned to visit, which included Austria, Portugal, Germany and Italy.
“Alvie thought Mount Vesuvius was incredible and you could really feel the weight of its history. Edite is an art buff so visiting Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper painting in Milan was a special moment for her,” says Sue.
After Europe they flew to China where they spent a month travelling around. “China is astonishing. It is so culturally different. The entire trip was everything and more than we could have hoped for.”
For Sue it was the famous Terracotta Army in Xi’an that will always stick in her mind.
“I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was incredible,” she says. Having a relaxed approach to the itinerary meant the family avoided any major rows. If we needed a break, we would stay in one place for a little while longer,” says Sue. “It was important to look after each other. And along the way I realised just how tough and resilient but also how caring and considerate my children really are.”
While Sue says it was the adventure of a lifetime, she admits there were some worrying moments along the way.
“In Beijing we checked into our apartment, left the kids watching TV and dashed out to get some food for us all. It should have taken five minutes,” she says. “We found the supermarket but came out a different entrance and walked around for about three hours as it got dark, totally lost, trying to get home.”
Asking anyone they could find for help, Sue showed them a map.
“Nobody knew where we should go. We were frantic. Then finally we got into a taxi, which took us 100 yards down the road. We were so close all along,” she laughs.
Another sticky situation occurred in Italy when, while rushing to catch a boat, the family came across a roadblock.
“We were driving to the port in Sicily when we came across a sign in the road,” says Sue. “There were no houses, no signposts and the words in front of us looked like they said ‘road closed’.”
When she saw the sign, she had visions of the family plummeting down the winding mountainside road if they pushed ahead.
However, to turn around would mean missing their boat back to the Italian mainland so they decided to plough on.
“We got out, moved the sign and carried on going. Within minutes we found ourselves in a boggy field, tyres spinning. The road had almost entirely washed away,” she says. “We had to drive across it to get on the road again. My heart was in my mouth but we made it in the end.”
When their adventure came to an end in August, Sue says that coming back to the UK was a shock to the system.
“Once you’ve felt that sense of freedom, it’s hard to get back to normal. We started chatting about where to go next after about a week,” she laughs.
BUT despite their wanderlust the children settled back into their new school years and, fortuitously, the lessons they had learned on the trip came in handy almost immediately.
“Edite’s first topic that term was China. What were the chances? She was able to bring in all her souvenirs,” says Sue.
She insists that while travelling the world as a family may not suit everyone, it’s not as daunting as people think. “A lot of people talk about doing things. They say, ‘We’d really love to do that one day’ but never take the plunge.
“My advice would be to go for it. You can always come home if it doesn’t work out but if you never try, you’ll never know.
“All you need is a little faith. Oh, and some tea bags.”