She had gone to ask for hearing test but mentioned an unusual symptom
A GP immediately suspected something was seriously wrong when a woman who made an appointment about a hearing test mentioned a seemingly harmless symptom. Neil Hughes’ wife Carol was at the GP to discuss a potential hearing test when she happened to mention something odd.
“She told him: ‘I’ve also got a bit of a metallic taste in my mouth,’ so he sent her for an endoscopy,” Neil, 62, says. Carol had always been very healthy and there were no signs that anything was seriously wrong but when the results came back, the doctor said he had “found something nasty.”
Carol had oesophageal cancer, which would turn out to be terminal. It was 2024 and Neil gave up work as a senior bid manager for one of Europe’s largest multinational organisations to care for her.
Faced with such a bleak prognosis, the couple decided they would go on some final trips before she became too ill to travel. “It came right out of the blue. She was ridiculously healthy,” Neil, who lives in Essex, says. “We phoned a cancer specialist and said, ‘Right, we’d like to go to Cambodia and Vietnam for a couple of weeks.’
“They said, ‘Yeah, we can insure you for £16,000.’ So we decided to go to Europe instead.” The couple visited Nice, Berlin, Prague and Vienna, and had a wonderful time. When they returned, Neil made a promise to Carol.
“We were in the Casino in Monaco, sipping 20 euro James Bond Martinis and she asked me what I’d do when she was gone,” he says. “Then she said: ‘You’re not allowed to sit in front of the laptop and drink too much wine.’”
Neil agreed and together they decided to set up a travel blog Do Not Go Gently Travel – Adventurous Travel for Older Travellers so that he could focus on exploring the world and documenting his experiences. Carol died in March last year at the age of 71. The couple had been together for 31 years and Neil was devastated.
But over the last 16 months, the accomplished photographer has kept the promise he made and Do Not Go Gently has been expanding by the week. “The title is based on Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’, which seemed appropriate given the circumstances, as I grew up near his home in Swansea. And the poem was read at Carol’s funeral,” he says.
The blog has a logo featuring Neil running around the world with the Grim Reaper on his back. “Some people think it’s a bit close to the bone. But that is what I am doing – I want to fulfill everything in the time I have.”
The experience has helped Neil manage his grief, and he now travels regularly for two-month blocks at a time. House insurance rules won’t let him stay away for too long, and after his first seven-month trip, he found himself exhausted.
“It is a lot easier to deal with grief when you are keeping yourself busy. The idea is that I am living on behalf of Carol as well. It has been a good distraction, but there were a few difficult times. During Covid we did a puzzle of all the landmarks around Europe, and there was just one neither of us recognised. After Carol passed away, I went to Prague to see Bruce Springsteen play, and I saw the Dancing House. When I realised it was the place from the puzzle, that broke me. I had to find somewhere quiet for half an hour.
“Normally, I am fine, but things do sneak up on you.”
Soon, Neil will visit Tanzania, which will be his 60th destination, followed by The Seychelles, Sri Lanka, and Costa Rica. He plans to travel for as long as he can, but doesn’t aim to visit every country on earth. Easter Island and the Iguazú Falls, on the border of Argentina and Brazil, were bucket-list destinations, and he fell in love with Mongolia, but he says he wasn’t so fussed about Bali, which has become very overdeveloped and busy.
Carol told Neil before she died that he could date someone else, but he is not sure that he is ready to do so. For now, he is happy to meet new people and broaden his horizons. “I find the UK very divisive at the moment. There’s no nuance anymore – it’s either black or white. It’s good to meet people from different backgrounds with different views.
“I want people to know that solo travel isn’t just for gap year kids. In the last 18 months, I’ve had a coffee with the director of a mosque in Indonesia, met Indigenous tribesmen in a forest in Colombia, stood on the equator in São Tomé and Príncipe, and danced with jubilant football fans in Argentina after they beat Egypt. I’ve dined with a retired banker living in Hong Kong and a Polish MMA fighter.”
Neil likes to go off the beaten track, take as many local buses as possible and sample local delicacies, such as fish head curry in Penang, which he said was delicious.
“I think Carol would be pleased with what I’m doing. I think she’d be proud of it. And pleased to see that I am maintaining my tradition of not doing anything by half,” he adds.

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