WWOOFing North and South, Margaret Halliday's third memoir, describes her time as a WWOOFer in New Zealand and Scotland. She travels widely encountering an eclectic mix of people and animals. She gets butted by a billy goat, chased by geese, mobbed by chickens; swims with seals, explores New Zealand's wilderness, gets close to sudden death and deepens her understanding of the meaning of life. Her work places include Scottish crofts, market gardens, retreat centres and organic farms, while her accommodation ranges from basic caravans to mansions. This book will appeal to, and maybe inspire, anyone contemplating an alternative lifestyle or a different way of travelling. WWOOFing can be undertaken in many countries, allowing people of all ages and backgrounds to experience a variety of cultures, leading to a profounder acceptance of the world. WWOOF= Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms
About the Author: Margaret Halliday was born in England in 1949 with green fingers and itchy feet. She satisfied the former first, by doing a horticultural course at the West of Scotland Agricultural College. She fell in love with Scotland, married a Scotsman and raised two children, while working in scientific research and studying up to doctorate level. She qualified as a teacher of biology and chemistry and taught in Edinburgh. Her marriage broke up in 1986, partly because of those itchy feet, and she went to live in Istanbul in 1988, where she taught biological sciences at Marmara University for five years. Following this she taught English in Budapest and Damascus. She returned to Turkey and taught biology at a school for gifted children near Istanbul. At the age of fifty she went to India, undeterred by being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She kept diaries throughout and planned to expand them into short stories. These evolved into 'Prana Soup: an Indian Odyssey' which was published in November 2013. She continued to travel extensively and between her trips to India cycled round Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. After her Indian travels she spent a year flying round the world, spending time in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Bali and New Zealand, as well as Hungary, Turkey and Canada. While in New Zealand she became a 'WWOOFer' (a worldwide worker on an organic farm), spending five months on both the North and South Islands and returning for a further six months the following year, when she bought a small van and travelled to locations off the beaten track. Back in Scotland she continued life as a 'WWOOFer' for three more years, travelling to places from the Scottish Borders to the Islands of the Hebrides. She worked in the walled garden of the Beshara School, near Hawick, where she later did a six-month course in esoteric education, studying Ibn 'Arabi and Rumi, amongst other spiritual masters. This experience has enriched her world tremendously, giving her the inner strength to live with the pain of osteoarthritis and MS. She is now settled in Edinburgh, virtually travelling through her writing, although she still goes on the occasional trip. She has completed a second book about her experience of being a single mother in the late sixties, 'Good Vibrations: A Story of a Single 60s Mum', published in February, 2015. She published a third book, WWOOFing North and South, about her time as a WWOOFer in New Zealand and Scotland in 2016.