Graham Simpson's Blog
18.11.2009
New Beginnings
First of all, for those of you who have been following my blogs – my apologies for such a long gap in communicating.
The reason is simple - I've rediscovered the joys of being fully occupied in developing a small family travel company.
When I stood down as Chairman of Watford Football Club last December after seven exhilarating but obsessional years in footy (that's a book on its own), I thought the reasonably quiet life beckoned when Yianna and I would divide our time between our beloved Paxos retreat and our house on the Sussex coast. My sons, Mathew and Daniel, were helping to run our office in London, I could continue to orchestrate the Greek programme for Simpson and leave our very capable staff to do the rest. I started to write my blog in Paxos and generally, life was sweet.
However, things don't always turn out how you plan and as I started to relax - I started to think. Dangerous!
Prior to my adventure at Watford, Yianna and I had successfully run Simply Travel for 20 years and during the 90s the company came to be recognised as one of the innovative specialist travel companies and was the recipient of many awards. It didn't take me long to appreciate that I'm no good at pottering and the draw of being part of the team to help make Simpson a top 21st Century specialist travel company was too great. Besides, the core values which Yianna and I so passionately held in the 80s and 90s remained – that is being treated as individuals and giving the best service.
Therefore, in the last few months' instead of quietly embracing semi-retirement, I have spread my wings and rediscovered the Simpson destinations. Yianna and I island-hopped to Samos, Simpson's new Greek discovery for 2010 – a wonderful island that requires a blog of its own later. I recently returned (after a gap of 10 years) from a two-week trip to Turkey with Mathew, reacquainting myself with the exotic beauty and hospitality of the southwest region of this huge country – hence our new and exciting programme. In between, there have been trips to Corsica (still the most beautiful island in the Med), Mallorca and Morocco. The only place I didn't have time to visit was Italy, but I found a young and extremely knowledgeable Italian, who spent the summer searching for new properties from Sardinia to Sicily and is currently assembling our new and exciting Italian programme for 2010.
Add to this our new website (I hope you like it) and our all-in-one brochure called a ‘Taste of Simpson’ giving us conservation 'brownie points' for saving trees, and you get the picture – there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Yianna is threatening to leave me because she says I've become a workaholic (just kidding!) – but, you know what? – I'm enjoying it and if we can really move forward and build on what we already have – then life will be sweet again.
New Beginnings
First of all, for those of you who have been following my blogs – my apologies for such a long gap in communicating.
The reason is simple - I've rediscovered the joys of being fully occupied in developing a small family travel company.
When I stood down as Chairman of Watford Football Club last December after seven exhilarating but obsessional years in footy (that's a book on its own), I thought the reasonably quiet life beckoned when Yianna and I would divide our time between our beloved Paxos retreat and our house on the Sussex coast. My sons, Mathew and Daniel, were helping to run our office in London, I could continue to orchestrate the Greek programme for Simpson and leave our very capable staff to do the rest. I started to write my blog in Paxos and generally, life was sweet.
However, things don't always turn out how you plan and as I started to relax - I started to think. Dangerous!
Prior to my adventure at Watford, Yianna and I had successfully run Simply Travel for 20 years and during the 90s the company came to be recognised as one of the innovative specialist travel companies and was the recipient of many awards. It didn't take me long to appreciate that I'm no good at pottering and the draw of being part of the team to help make Simpson a top 21st Century specialist travel company was too great. Besides, the core values which Yianna and I so passionately held in the 80s and 90s remained – that is being treated as individuals and giving the best service.
Therefore, in the last few months' instead of quietly embracing semi-retirement, I have spread my wings and rediscovered the Simpson destinations. Yianna and I island-hopped to Samos, Simpson's new Greek discovery for 2010 – a wonderful island that requires a blog of its own later. I recently returned (after a gap of 10 years) from a two-week trip to Turkey with Mathew, reacquainting myself with the exotic beauty and hospitality of the southwest region of this huge country – hence our new and exciting programme. In between, there have been trips to Corsica (still the most beautiful island in the Med), Mallorca and Morocco. The only place I didn't have time to visit was Italy, but I found a young and extremely knowledgeable Italian, who spent the summer searching for new properties from Sardinia to Sicily and is currently assembling our new and exciting Italian programme for 2010.
Add to this our new website (I hope you like it) and our all-in-one brochure called a ‘Taste of Simpson’ giving us conservation 'brownie points' for saving trees, and you get the picture – there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Yianna is threatening to leave me because she says I've become a workaholic (just kidding!) – but, you know what? – I'm enjoying it and if we can really move forward and build on what we already have – then life will be sweet again.
The air holidays and flights shown are ATOL Protected by the Civil Aviation Authority. Our ATOL number is ATOL 5858. ATOL Protection extends primarily to customers who book and pay in the United Kingdom.Click on the ATOL logo if you want to know more.Simpson Travel is a trading name of Far & Wide Ltd.