Julie Caplin on her love of travel and how it inspires her books
As a child I was quiet and timid, perhaps cowed by a miserable parental divorce, and I preferred to find my adventure between the covers of books. I was an avid reader, most likely a defence and a bid to escape the world around me, and lived my imaginary life through the stories of Ursula Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, Monica Edward’s Punchbowl Farm and Malcolm Saville’s Lone Pine Five series.
I travelled vicariously through my reading and these books inspired a love of the English countryside and, thanks to Malcolm Saville, a desperate desire to visit Shropshire and Rye, but that was the limit of my travel aspirations. (I can’t tell you how delighted I was in later life to discover that one of my colleagues was involved with the Malcolm Saville Society and had all the books – and yes I borrowed them.)
Therefore, it was truth universally acknowledged by friends and family, that my star sign, Sagittarius, was wholly inappropriate. Apparently they are known for their ‘optimistic, adventurous, and freedom-loving nature, driven by a passion for exploration, knowledge, and philosophy’ – I was not.
When others of my age were planning gap years and exotic round-the-world itineraries, I couldn’t imagine anything worse than heading off for a year, tortoise-like with all your worldly possessions in a rucksack on your back. So, imagine the surprise of friends and family when in my late twenties, I announced that I was giving up my job, selling my car and going off round the world – and possibly not coming back. Quite a few did NOT believe me. As a writer of romance I can freely confess that this momentous decision was born of heartache – the ‘one’ and I had broken up and I couldn’t imagine getting over him. (Okay, I do have some of the Sagittarian drama about me.) My response was to flee the country and head to New Zealand for a new start where I had enough points to emigrate.
As luck would have it, a dear friend, Lindsey, was also at a cross roads and we hatched a plan to travel together. Suddenly I was the adventurous one, giving up my rented home, jacking in a very good job, selling my car and getting rid of nearly all of my worldly goods.
For nine months, we planned, consolidated and saved. It seems funny now but Lonely Planet’s Guide to South East Asia on a Shoestring was our bible because the internet didn’t exist thirty years ago. Part of the fun was the research, working out where we wanted to go and how we were going to get there. We settled on an itinerary which started in Nepal and then went on to Thailand, Malayasia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.
Arriving in Nepal as our first port of call probably wasn’t the softest of landings, talk about culture shock to someone who’d never been further than Majorca! Cows wandering in the dusty roads, ancient beaten-up Toyotas careering through tiny streets, men carrying fridges on their backs with ropes around their foreheads – and I loved it all and couldn’t wait to share it with everyone. And thus a traveller was born — and so was the travel writer.
During that trip I wrote copious letters describing everything because I couldn’t drink it in fast enough: the food, the sights, the history, the scenery. Nepal was utterly magical, from the dusty, Durbar Square in Katmandu, with its pagoda style temples and mystical blending of Hinduism and Buddhism through to the velvet folds of the paddy fields terracing the hills on the route to Pokhara.
I wanted to capture every last minute of everything I saw and did, recording faithfully the joy and delight in discovering the new and the old. My love of travel blossomed and I became the full-on Sagittarian I was destined to be. One of the most frequent recipients of my letters was my much beloved Nanny, to whom I was very close – she being the only person who when I announced I was going travelling didn’t say ‘are you mad?’ My family did think giving up a good, steady job was crazy. But then Nanny Doreen was always on my side – even when I was in the wrong. After she died, I found my letters all carefully kept in a little box. When I read them, it took me right back to trekking up the Annapurna, sleeping overnight in a cowshed, watching our Nepali guide remove a leech from Lindsey’s leg, seeing women in brightly coloured saris harvest peanuts from the ground and so many other things that were long buried in my memories.
That initial trip inspired my love of travel but also a love of writing about it – which remained dormant for many years because reader, I married him. Yes, the ‘one’ came out to New Zealand and proposed. I returned home and got on with a very happy and busy life. Children, career and husband. But the travel bug was embedded.
Fast forward another fifteen years and I’d already had one book published, but I had an idea for a book about a road trip around Europe. Those descriptive skills all came flooding back and I discovered how much I loved writing about the local landscape, culture, food and of course wine. This has become a key characteristic of my writing and my settings are always very important and often a character in their own right.
I’ve now written thirteen books in the Romantic Escape series, each of which are set in a different location including Denmark, Iceland, Croatia, Czech Republic and Japan to name but a few.
My next book sees a return to New York and I’m excited to set another book in one of the most dazzling cities in the world. I’ve travelled extensively but there’s nothing quite like the flamboyant buzz of the Big Apple. With Christmas on Fifth Avenue I’ll be celebrating all the razzmatazz and sparkle that holiday New York has to offer.
Christmas on Fifth Avenue is published by One More Chapter on 23 October 2025
