Elephant-back Safaris in the Okavango Delta

In 1994 I flew to Maun in Botswana to set up a documentary for the BBC Natural History Unit on the Elephant-back Safaris, which Randall J Moore had recently started to run in the Okavango Delta.

Randall introduced me to his lead elephant, a mature male called Abu, who was highly trained and responsive. An Africa elephant, Abu had been born the Kruger National Park. After the adults in his herd were culled, he had captured as a calf and shipped to a safari park in America. Randall found him in a bad way, living in a barn in an area too cold for his well-being.

Abu was brought back to Africa with two other trained elephants called Cathy and Benny. After looking for a  home first in Kenya and then Knysna in the Cape, Randall brought them to Botswana in 1990. They were joined by Bibi, a trained African elephant from a zoo in Ceylon, and a number of juveniles who helped to make up a small, captive herd.

The documentary, Dawn to Dusk on Safari, presented by the naturalist and wildlife artist Jonathan Scott, was first shown on BBC 1. We'd often see it repeated on television in South Africa.

Abu has sadly died but Cathy and the herd still thrive. You can read more about them on the website for Abu's Camp.

Book Club comments about 'Ride the Wings of Morning'

'I loved it. It made me laugh. I now know Sophie's family are totally dotty. I enjoyed it.'

'I absolutely loved it.'

'It's terribly important that it is true story.'
'Much more facinating.'
'It's too acute for it to be made up.'
One reader said she sees 'a miniscule part of life that so funny...'

'I don't know one end of a Springbok from another but I love the illustrations.'

'I think it's fantastic; a great book to have by the bed. I kept dipping in.'

'I've spent a lot of time in Africa. I find the letter format a bit disruptive for a long read but it was good fun to dig in and out of. I think the family are hysterical. It's fascinating.'

'It has certainly whetted my appetite for travel.'

'There's an endless demand for animal stories.'

'Tamzin (Sophie's sister) writes very well - it reads well.'

'I don't do letters. They don't keep me awake. Because I have arthritis in my hands I found the paperback too long and too heavy physically - it is very heavy. Literally too heavy weight-wise for holiday reading. I didn't like the double spacing, but I thought the drawings were lovely - what a way to live.'

'The letter format would make it a good train book, perhaps best on Kindle.'

'This book made me feel I wanted to go on an adventure and I liked reading about the Army wife. It's a book you can pick up and put down but I prefered Funnily Enough.'

It was agreed that whilst ride the Wings of Morning stretches the reader into new dimensions on a physical level, Funnily Enough stretches one spiritually.

'I've enjoyed it more than Sophie Neville's first book.'

'My mother loved the first book ~ Funnily Enough. She's quite particular, very particular about what she'll read, and she was really thrilled with it.'

Geese I have drawn ~

I have always loved sketching geese. I drew these when I was exhibiting at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge. I was there talking on otter conservation. With out two otters. I am sure you can understand that not that much was achieved in the way of painting and can only imagine what happened when one of the otters escaped.

My South African friend Rupert Baber - who appears in Ride the Wings of Morning - bought five geese as a security measure. They wandered around the garden honking at strangers. I thought they were lovely. The only problem was that they had to be shut up on the tennis court at night so that they were secure themselves. It actually made them easier to paint.

An acrylic on canvas.

Back in England I drew a goose standing on the ice, executed by using a glass tube ~ thick black ink on smooth cartridge paper.

I made prints and experimented with different backgrounds. Many of the resultant geese were auctioned to raise money for charity.

The end result was an award-winning painting. We used the image for invitations and charity Christmas cards. I framed and exhibited black and white prints in a number of galleries, including the shop at Slimbridge. It proved the goose that laid the golden egg - or golden prints anyway.

All sketches on the blog are featured in 'Ride the Wings of Morning' and are (c) Sophie Neville. Please contact me if you need to use them on sophie@sophieneville.co.uk

'Ride the Wings of Morning' now out in paperback and hardcover

Paperback - £9.99 on Lulu.com - http://www.lulu.com/shop/sophie-neville/ride-the-wings-of-morning/paperback/product-20214589.html

A review published on Amazon ~ by Katy B

While the majority of her friends and family were following a more conventional path of marriage, having children and earning their livings in the UK, Sophie took off to South Africa to move on from her years of ill health suffering from the debilitating effects of CFS.

This exchange of letters between Sophie in Africa and two of her sisters and a few of her friends in the UK, chronicles her amazing adventures and new life, whilst at the same time giving a parallel account of 'normal life' back home in the UK through the sisters' and friends' letters.

It is this juxtaposition of Sophie's life against what is going on elsewhere which serves to highlight just how extraordinary and exceptional her adventures were. While others were dealing with sleepless nights, childcare issues and settling in to domestic early married life, we can live the dream vicariously of what might have been for us too, if we had made the same choices as Sophie as she lived in a country where apartheid was still the norm, where the animals and wildlife were wonderfully diverse, unpredictable and beautiful and where her adventures with the horses and safari work add humour and great interest.

The book is fantastically illustrated by Sophie and includes a great variety of drawings, maps, cards sent home for Christmas and other occasions and cartoons, all of which are eye catching and contribute to the enormous pleasure of this book.

But it is not all whacky humour and eccentricity - Sophie explores some of the more difficult questions of life here too, just as she did in her first book, 'Funnily Enough'. But this time although there is some reference to her strong and inspirational Christian faith, she deals more with human issues of relationships, and her honest concern and ever present worry - 'I long to be loved and in love'. Buy this book and read it - you will enjoy it!

A review by Peter Bell ~

Ride the Wings of Morning (lovely title) is a terrific sequel to Sophie's marvellous Funnily Enough; further following her life of extraordinary exploits and adventures, now in southern Africa. Some horrific, most delightful, but all fascinating and very amusingly told by way of correspondence to and from her more conventional sisters. Her parents and many friends from Africa also feature as do a veritable profusion of Sophie's joyful and individual style of sketches, drawings and paintings that have become even more assured as time progressed. Many are brilliant! (Especially her splendid cartoons!)

Sophie has a wonderful knack of inclusion of her readers in all her writing. She is very observant, particularly of the absurd, the ridiculous and comic juxtapositions as well as the mundane and it shows in the great warmth, engaging honesty and infectious humour in her writing. The reader is privileged that she shares this somewhat maverick part of her life in which she gives so much of herself. Again! I was ever more captivated by this book but in a slightly different way to Funnily Enough. A truly fascinating read from much obviously painstaking work.

Only a full read of this marvellous 542-page book can do it the justice it deserves that no review of mine can hope to achieve. Unplug the phone, shut out the English 'summer' and indulge yourself with Sophie in the warmth of her true life in a world so far apart from your own! She is a uniquely talented and individual person and this extraordinary work is to be deeply savoured and enjoyed. Tops on any scale of hugs and highly recommended by me as one of many here. The printed editions are to keep for ever.
Thank you so much, Sophie. Thanks also to Perry, Tamzin, and 'Mum and Dad'. I really look forward with great enthusiasm to the promised next instalment. Quite lovely!

Peter Bell on Ride the Wings of Morning

Reviews and comments ~

What Sophie did next ~

Following her illness with ME/CFS, Sophie Neville travelled to South Africa to stay with a friend, and the different climate led to her rapid recovery. This book is the account of what she got up to over the following few years. Quite a startling mixture - horse safaris, travelling, painting, holiday management and media work in South Africa as it made the transition from Apartheid to full democracy.

It is presented in the form of letters (mostly) between her and her sisters, so the book uncovers the warmth of the relationships within the family, and is written with immediacy and freshness. Much other ground is also covered - the wildlife, plenty about horses and misbehaving cars, lively descriptions of the ex-pat and local workers and tourists, a vivid sense of the locations that Neville is writing about. The book also includes as illustrations many of the pictures she drew. In the meantime, the way in which the lives of Tamzin and Perry unfold in Europe is another story.

As with Funnily Enough, this was a book I really hadn't expected to be engaged by - but I was. Thoroughly recommended. P. M. Fernandez

'This is gorgeous work Sophie, you have a real gift for drawing people into your wonderful adventure in a real and intimate way. I feel almost as if I had been there with you. Great work! ‘ Skye Wieland, Queensland, Australia

‘I am reading your book now on Kindle about your time in Africa and I love it! What a sense of humor you and your family have!’ Allen Hunt

‘I love how you’ve captured your journey with sketches and watercolour paintings.’

'I am  loving your book. Your mother sounds like a riot! Love the mama donkey work!’ Kate Coleridge, writing from Cape Town.