I’m 52 years old, and I have had all sorts of jobs, from a postman to a security guard. But my life changed forever while I was working in a cheese factory near where I live in North Wales.

I was involved in a serious road accident in October 2019. It was actually meant to be my day off but I was on my way to work because I was covering a colleague. A wagon came out of nowhere and hit my car, which spun around three times and crunched open like a tin can. My injuries were serious. I had a broken neck, lost my front teeth, and my right arm was in a bad way.

I don’t remember much about the accident; the whole day is a blank for me. I was in so much pain, the drugs knocked me out big time. But that does mean I can talk about it without emotion – it’s affected my wife more than me in that respect.

I was blue lighted to Royal Stoke University Hospital, a major trauma centre, where I stayed for a couple of weeks. Then I was back and forth for another six months. I owe so much to Dr Annie Bennett, who saved my arm [from being amputated]. But I lost the use of my elbow joint after calcification occurred from the arm being in a cast.

It feels like my elbow is permanently stuck in a vice and my arm is a piece of wood – that’s the best way to describe it.

Knowing I would never regain full movement in my arm again, I had to give up working in the cheese factory, where I had been a machine operator.

Introduction to travel

There was very little out there for me, given this was April 2020 and Covid was upon us, but fortunately, I had something to fall back on.

By the time I’d been at the cheese factory a number of years, I had been getting fed up of the shift pattern [two days, two nights, four days off], and wanted to do something meaningful with my free days. I’d always had an interest in travel, and I spent some time researching homeworking agencies. I wanted something low risk that could work around another full-time occupation, and that led me to Independent Travel Experts (ITE). The set-up fees were minimal and there were no monthly targets or set hours, which was perfect for me at the time.

At first, I dipped in and out, making about 8/10 bookings a month, while still working in the factory. My wife has a career as a hairdresser, and my first customers were her clients and some of my co-workers.

During the pandemic, I looked after my existing customers, and as we came out of it, I stepped up my business and my presence in the community, and my numbers started going up.

In summer 2022 a shop in our village of Felinheli came on the market – the premises were sentimental for my wife because it was where she opened her first hairdressing business, and we purchased the shop, with the intention of turning it back into a hair salon. By the time we had finished renovating it, my wife had a change of heart about running a busy salon again, and she said to me: “why don’t you have the shop?”

Going up a gear

So, I started to grow my vision for the agency and see the potential in it. It’s now the main hub of my business, where I work every day, and it’s split in two. I have my office, tucked away behind a partition, which is like the nerve centre of the business, and then I have a main area out front, where I sit with my customers when they come into see me.

How do I manage with my disability? I’m very old school and I still write notes for all my bookings on pen and paper, which I file away. It’s easier for me to take out a relevant folder and have everything physically in front of me. In the shop, I have a monitor on the wall, which connects to my PC, and I use that to show my customers what I can see on my screen.

Since taking on the shop, my business has grown massively, and now I’m one of ITE’s top sellers, as well as the overall ITE top seller for Jet2holidays. November has been bonkers, I’ve booked flights to Mauritius and New Zealand, holidays to Iceland, Majorca, Tenerife, and I’ve done some honeymoon bookings as well. I’ll happily price match the likes of Jet2holidays, easyJet holidays, Tui and Olympic because £20 commission today might mean £1,000 on the next booking.

I’m wary of employing somebody to help me, because I’m very protective of my business. The ITE support team helps with inputting bookings and generating confirmation emails and tickets, which is the only way I can do this on own. They offer a fantastic level of support. 

Most of my customers are very loyal and they know I’m a one-man band. I offer a fully bilingual service – 60% of my customers use Welsh as their first language, and that’s always a nice little ice breaker with new customers when they realise we have that in common.

I’m looking forward to the peaks but also slightly apprehensive about it – last January I made close to one-quarter of a million pounds in sales, and this January could be even higher.  


When I’m selling holidays, it’s like I put my game face on – I’m very chatty and confident in the shop, and less so away from it. In winter, when I’m wearing a thick jumper, people can’t see my arm but the damage is more obvious if I’m wearing a polo shirt in summer weather, for example.

At the time, it was an awful, life-changing injury, but the good that came out of something so bad, well it’s been outstanding. I thought I’d be operating machinery at the cheese factory until I was sixty… and I don’t even like cheese! Moving into travel full-time has changed my life, I’m now financially secure, because of the income you can make from a good travel business.  

I don’t go to bed at night fretting about what happened to me. I’m a positive person – I wouldn’t be here now if my glass wasn’t half-full. I see travel as escapism from the real world, and my office is like my little cocoon. I just want a little piece of the pie, I’m quite happy with that.

As told to Katherine Masters