No money, no flat, no fiancee: in 2022 Bolton lost almost everything that underpinned his life. Three years and 53 countries later, he has more than rebuilt it
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n the eve of his 30th birthday, Bobby Bolton found himself living in a mouldy caravan on a derelict farm in Hertfordshire. His relationship of 11 years had just ended, the construction business he had spent five years building was collapsing and he only had a few hundred pounds left in the bank. “I had moved out of the flat I shared with my ex, borrowed money from her to buy this caravan and had such low self-esteem about the direction my life and career was headed that I isolated myself,” he says. “I couldn’t socialise and I was stooping so much when I walked that I felt myself getting back issues. My mum thought I was suicidal.”
She pleaded with him to come home and live with her in Wigan, but Bolton refused. “It felt like the ultimate defeat.” He compromised on a weekend visit instead. Driving the 200 miles north, Bolton soon ended up in the pub with old school friends. Several pints in, he saw something that would change his life.
“This battered old Land Rover Defender filled with kit pulled up outside the pub and a couple got out. The man had a big shaggy beard and the woman had wild hair and they both had this look of adventure in their eyes,” he says. “The Land Rover had a bumper sticker on it that read ‘Family Expedition’, and I suddenly realised what I needed was to get out on the road like them. I wanted to rediscover my purpose, and that boiled down to three questions: working out where I wanted to live, who I wanted to live with and what I wanted to do.”
