Vivien Uff

Vivien Uff was born and educated in St Mawes and at Falmouth County High School for girls before teaching Geography in London and Helston. A passion for travel and boating led to working in multi-racial comprehensives for FARELF and the Hong Kong local Government in 1964. Marrying the Head of Geography at St George's led to extensive travel (80 countries to date) combined with teaching EFL from Paris to the Far East after both taking early retirement from Huddersfield schools in 1995. A recent degree in Creative Writing led to producing smart phone walking guides for her childhood haunts illustrated by her daughter Caroline, author of several children's books including the Lulu series. Memories and old photographs add local colour to essential geographical, geological and historical details with hot tips for budget-watchers and the very best drinking and people-watching sunspots. The Falmouth guides revolved round the OTS shuttle bus who sponsored a leaflet (50p) available locally. In 2015 two condensed photographic e-guides were added to enable faster downloading on smart phones with minimal text. 'Picture Walking Poldark's Falmouth' was inspired by the very popular recent TV series of Winston Graham's Georgian Cornish saga mostly filmed in Cornwall. Many people are currently visiting film locations hoping to see some recording but this will start in September 2015. 'Picture Walking St Mawes' simply illustrates the earlier walkabout. Vivien welcomes readers' anecdotes, memories, corrections etc on all the publications as her aim is to record her Cornish heritage for her grandchildren and posterity. Vivien would like to produce an App for these eventually.

Tweets and a blog began by encapsulating the Uff's weekly Yorkshire trails and followed their footsteps to Sussex (where Alex teaches) and abroad. Both became sporadic when editing the LBT theatre's Friends' newsletter but should increase after retiring in May 2015.

Film and theatre, gardening, grandmother-ing, socialising, travelling and far too much TV mean Vivien never has a dull moment while Trevor can watch sport or read in peace at their home in Almondbury, West Yorkshire. They hope to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in April 2016.

Vivien is currently working on a super-fast download of 'Picture Walking the Cote d'Azur' inspired by a June, 2015 train discoveries holiday.