About the author

Valerie Poore was born in London, England, in 1955 and grew up in both north ofLondon and the west of Dorset. After completing her degree in English, History and French at Bournemouth in 1976, she took a further course in the conservation and restoration of museum artefacts at Lincoln College of Art, following which she worked for a furniture restoration company until the birth of her first daughter in 1979.

She then spent two years doing restoration on a freelance basis before going to South Africa in 1981 with her husband and small children.

Valerie and her family spent three years on the farm in Natal that is the subject of her book, African Ways. In 1984, the family moved to the Byrne Valley and then to Richmond in 1986, where they spent a further year. The remainder of her time in South Africa was spent in and around Johannesburg where her husband’s work was based.

Valerie left Africa permanently in 2000 and subsequently settled in the Netherlands, where she lives on a barge in Rotterdam. She maintains that this rather special lifestyle is the only way she can bear living in Europe after her African experience. She teaches academic and business English on a freelance basis and writes in her spare time. Her second book about life on the Dutch waterways has also been completed and she is currently working on her third book and first work of fiction.