I was born in Germany. I married a British man. I knew the rest of my life would be in England.

I've got a story about the elephant in the Kruger National Park in 1983. We tried to get there a year before but everything was already booked a year ahead.. That was it - couldn't get in.

We started at the top in the north to go down to the south. We booked the night before and were gonna be there again the next night. You spend a lot of time to watch animals, for them to turn around, things like that. And we were stopping and looking at some little monkeys, they were playing right on the way down, we couldn't get past. So we waited. And then when we were gonna set off, there was this enormous elephant right in the middle on the path and the ears flapping like that.

And the rest just stopped - all of them… I couldn't breathe and I thought he was going to charge. He put one foot forward.

And then my son was at the wheel - thank goodness that he is a very quick thinker - and it quickly went back. And it was still there waiting how far we would go back. So if it would have been my husband, he had already had a couple of strokes - we didn't know - he wouldn’t have been that quick.

And then in the middle of it we went where all the crowds met, those round buildings where you could stay overnight, and got some groceries. They said: “Have you got a place where you're staying?” We said “We haven’t got one… couldn’t get one”. And she says well, you can't go there, they're all going for food now and to the water holes. You don't want to be around when that happens.

Anyway, in the morning when we got up it was unbelievable. A chorus of birds - all sorts of birds and animals that you don’t see anywhere else except in these Southern countries. Then the next day we went on and it started to thunder all the way down to Durban and - really believe it - the thunder followed us all the way!

We went to another park … and we were the only ones there. That was spooky. And on the way back there was tremendous downpour and we stood there right in the middle - if we had gone any further, because it went all the way down, then we would have just gone down with the water because it's this aquaplaning.

We stood there waiting for it to get a bit better and now this car was coming from far away - a Volkswagen - with Zulus all in their gear with spears in the back. We were scared stiff.

Eventually then, we went down and there was a Wimpys and that was the only thing that was there like a B movie. All of a sudden there was all this this treacherous water coming down there. And we ordered something there and we stayed in the Zulu town in 83.