When George Goodnight, a lawyer on the staff of a London newspaper, finds his marriage has gone sour, his family holiday is cancelled and his car, broken down on the motorway, has been stolen, he walks through a gate in a fence on a summer's day in the middle of England. What he doesn't know, as he takes his first light steps across the sunlit meadows near the tiny village of Somerbourne Magna, is that he is embarking on a course that will take him far away from the country, the surroundings and the way of life he has always known. He is embarking on a journey that will eventually take him to the other side of the world.