A new book from a Cadgwith author tells the tales of the exciting life that began when she left her desk job to explore the world.

Jenny Steele Scolding was 21 when she left her BBC job in 1964 with £20 in her pocket and boarded a steamer to Israel.

Little did she know that this was the start of travels which saw her struggle through the Sahara to Timbuktu in a vehicle held together with bungee elastics, witness a holy man preaching from the back of an Indian elephant and listen to wolves in Canada howling at the moon.

Falmouth Packet:

Jenny enjoying Arab hospitality in Nazareth, 1964

The biography, Vagabond Girl, documents Jenny's lifelong passion for the open road, travelling rough.

Musing on the current pandemic, Jenny reckons it will be decades before people travel as they did before.

She said: "It’s possible that the world that moulded me has gone forever."

Hitch-hiking on trucks and sleeping anywhere – in doss houses, brothels, cow sheds, temples, or beneath the open skies – Jenny received extraordinary hospitality from people in all walks of life.

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Taking whatever jobs came to hand, Jenny learnt how to survive in a male-dominated world, eventually building a career in documentary film and television.

As readers follow her progress through the 1960s and 70s, they witness her brushes with pivotal moments in history including India and Pakistan at war, Nyerere’s socialist Tanzania, famine in Ethiopia and religious riots in Nigeria.

Along the way readers meet meet prime ministers, film stars, famous artists and writers, rock legends and revolutionaries.

The book ends when Jenny finally settles down in Cadgwith on the Lizard peninsula, where she has lived for the past 34 years with her husband, Bill.

Falmouth Packet:

Vagabond Girl, £12.99, is available from Amazon, Waterstones, Tor Mark online and local bookshops.