These two smaller companies were conceived about 60 years ago!

Margaret was born in Guildford, the middle child of an army family. She was educated in Pembroke Dock initially, but, because of army life, moved to different schools in Texas, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Germany. The family then moved to Anglesey. She obtained a Joint Honours degree in German and Russian at the University of Wales in Swansea. This was followed by a PGCE qualification at Nottingham University and then teaching languages at Ecclesbourne School in Derbyshire. After having a family (3 girls) she re-trained by doing a nursery conversion course and became Head of Normanton Nursery Unit in Derby.

Pete was the younger son of a Cambridge newsagent and went to school in Cambridge. He attended Hull University and obtained an Honours degree in Biochemistry. He then went to Leicester University, where he obtained a PhD and spent some time doing post doctorial research. He embarked on a teaching career in Leicester, but then moved to Dorset to become Head of Science at Castlefield School and then the Thomas Hardye School, both in Dorchester. He has two boys.

The two of us first met over 35 years ago when Margaret met and married Pete's brother, Barry. For 25 years we were brother and sister in law. In 1992, Pete was divorced. In 1996 Barry died suddenly and completely unexpectedly of a heart attack. We supported each other through these difficult times and as time went by, the friendship that had always existed between us, developed in a different direction. In 1998 Pete had to take early retirement from teaching on medical grounds. In the same year Margaret moved to Dorset from Derbyshire and in 1999 we 'ran away' to North Wales and got married. It was only after we returned that family and friends knew anything about it. They have all been very supportive.

Here in Dorset, we are actively involved in village life and can be regularly seen attending meetings, picking up litter, doing church watch, pub watch (usually from the inside!). We are on the church roof committee (raising money for the church roof repairs), neighbourhood watch, garden walkabout committee and have helped to produce a village book. We also enjoy just socialising.

We do as much walking as we can and aim to average at least 5 miles a day. We walk 3 miles to get our flour and 6 miles to get our eggs  and have even done a 30 mile round trip to go to an evening theatre performance. We enjoy walking to pubs and decided to see how many pubs we could walk to and back from, starting from home. We have now done 70 different pubs, one at a time( see pub walks). We are at the stage now where many of the pubs are 30 miles away and involve camping overnight. We are trying to get the tally up to 100

The rest of our time is taken up with long distance walking, travelling and of course the charity which we formed and run, called Children of Fiji.