Good evening

Accepted wisdom decrees that we become more risk averse as we get older. But that’s not the case for septuagenarian Elaine Kingett, who says: “I love scaring myself stupid trying new experiences.”

When Elaine was offered the chance to try out a naturist resort in Crete this summer at the age of 76, rather than being terrified of baring all, she found it all rather exciting and liberating, and “left feeling proud of every part of my ageing body for the first time in years”.

Elaine says travel has always been in her blood - ever since “an escape to Cornwall on a boyfriend’s Vespa at 17 lit a flame inside me”. Being a widow for 25 years hasn’t dampened that flame - in her 60s, she zoomed around Delhi in a tuk-tuk, stayed in a monastery in Nepal, and, tired of living in London when she hit 70, she decamped to live solo in Seville for three years.

What keeps the travel flame aglow? “If anything, the awareness of my mortality has only served to heighten my desire to get out and push myself further out of my comfort zone,” she says.

Rather than sitting at home, looking backwards, Elaine prefers to focus on the future. “So many friends say I’m so brave to continue to travel, to try new experiences,” she says. “But meeting new people in new places is what keeps me alive, what keeps my brain engaged far better than crosswords or Wordle.”

Getting older doesn’t have to limit our horizons. In fact, it can be the freedom pass we all craved during the time-crunched years we spent working and looking after our children.