(Please note these books are all out of print)

Introducing his books John Ridgway says...

The way I see it now, we all belly-flop onto the muddy surface of life. There are now around 6,000 million of us on this small planet. All contributing to it's gradual decline. We each wriggle around a bit, leaving a bit of an impression, then we slither off the shelf....

I was always lucky. But I have felt insecure since ever I remember, perhaps the legacy of a fairly average broken home, during and after WWII. Wild places seemed to soothe the anxiety.

One spring afternoon in London, in 1959, I was a twenty-one-year-old newly commissioned, under-confident, Second Lieutenant in the Parachute Regiment. I was on my own, listening to the rhetoric at Speakers Corner at Marble Arch. How I envied the conviction of those orators, perched on their soap-boxes. Later, walking down Park Lane, on that sunny, hopeful afternoon, never really having felt certain of anything in my own life, I began asking myself, if there was any fundamental action I might take in my own life which might actually help with the future of the world, which all those speakers were so anxious about.

By the time I'd reached Hyde Park Corner, I had decided that rapid population growth was the single biggest threat to peace and harmony in the future.

What could I do about? Well, set an example, that's what. When I got married we would have only one child. If everyone else followed suit, the world's population would halve in just one generation.

There would be space for everyone. Natural resources would last longer. Races, cultures, religions and political parties would not be forced into rubbing against one another until they set the world alight.

Barely nine years later, I was sailing on the Atlantic, trying to become the first person to sail alone round the world non-stop. Two years earlier, I had rowed across the North Atlantic with Chay Blyth, changing both our lives for ever.

Borne along on the North East Trade winds I wondered in what general direction I wanted my life to go. Marie Christine and I hade been married for four years and, yes, we had that one child, Rebecca, now just one year old.

I yearned for a life of contrast. Half the year doing one thing and the other half doing something quite different, each half recharging the batteries for the other. I wanted it all. Not just watching bubbles pass on the sea but the mountains, rivers and jungles too.

Thirty-five years later, I look back down a bumpy road. I've kept a diary on every day since 1958 and they have helped us write the books listed below. They're out of print now but still contain the memories. Still under-confident, I'm having to hold on quite tight now, not to slip off the muddy shelf....

Additional books by Marie Christine Ridgway

Additional books by Rebecca Ridgway

Back to the Contents page