When Bernadine Swale’s marriage ended after 36 years, when she was 57, her first instinct – once she had recovered from the shock – was that she couldn’t manage alone. “The standard, cookie-cutter way you have to be in your 60s is man and woman, and you travel together,” she says. It took her a few years to realise: “Actually, no.”
Now 68, Swale, a retired pharmacist, travels the world as a pet-sitter. Last year, she spent only 23 nights in her own bed, in a loft that looks out over downtown Denver. Pet-sitting stops have included London, New York, Athens, Botswana, Tokyo and New Zealand. “I absolutely love my life,” she says. “I have the best retirement there ever was.”
