Carpe diem! Sieze the day!

Intro: I'm a North Eastern lass, is a linguist, guide, scuba diver and ex-City banker. After ten years in London followed by three years on the Red Sea Riviera, Egypt (where I fell in love with my husband-to-be at his dive centre), I and the whole family are now back running Four Wynds B&B, language and history courses, in the heart of Hadrian’s Wall Country. In my "spare time" I write a blog, tweet and am a volunteer Yellow Badge Tourist Guide at nearby Vindolanda and Roman Army Museum.

For some time now, I have been wanting to marry together my love of language with my passion for history. That is why I am doing it now with my new business "Hands-on-Latin"!

Here's a bit of background info: My husband and I run a successful guest house business, Four Wynds, on Hadrian's Wall and the Pennine Way. I am a modern language graduate (University of London, Spanish with Italian) and spent ten years in international banking in the City. Whilst working I also gained a BSc degree in Financial Services from the Chartered Institute of Banking and UMIST. (In 2009 I became an accredited guide with The Institute of Tourist Guiding at Vindolanda and The Roman Army Museum and before, before, studied Latin to A-level.)

(My husband, Nigel, used to be the Operations Manager at the Barbican for sixteen years. He has also owned and managed his own scuba diving schools in Egypt. Through our London diving club we met in Egypt eleven years ago.)

It has always been an ambition of mine, since I fell in love with Hadrian's Wall Country in 2003, to teach the Minimus and Cambridge Latin books in a "Hands-on-way" at Vindolanda and the other Roman forts along the Wall. (I'm teaching Minimus Latin in three local primary schools as lunchtime clubs at Greenhead, Henshaw and Herdley Bank, a Church of England federation, Schools. I'm also a governor at Greenhead School and a member of the Primary Latin Committee.)

I'm passionate about this area, its history (all levels), its people, the English language, Romance languages, Latin, writing, geography, archaeology, maps (amongst other things) !  Since 2003 when I first came to this area I wanted to marry all these together into a course or courses. My "old" Latin teacher, who lives in Newcastle, is a family friend and she unwittingly planted the germ of an idea in my head a few years ago...she told me about the existence of the Minimus Latin books which are based on a real family who lived at Vindolanda two thousand years ago. This led me to believe that I could set up my own business to combine all these loves. This business is to be called "Hands-on-Latin" and will be fully set up in the very near future.