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The normal definition we are using for gap year travel is 'time taken out of education or the workplace, for a purpose'. However for a retirement gap, the activity and purpose might be the same, but the time of life is obviously different.
To quote from the Independent 28 January 2007, Sarah Harris, extract - 'grey gap years':
'Do not go gentle into that good night," wrote Dylan Thomas, "Old age should burn and rave at close of day/Rage, rage against the dying of the light". Little did he know that 50 years on his words would be reverberating across every flea-ridden backpackers' hostel from New Zealand to Guatemala, as increasing numbers of over-fifties stubbornly "rage" against the grisly spectre of early retirement and rose-growing to embark upon a twilight gap year.
Known, unflatteringly, to the travel industry as the "denture venturers" or the "Saga louts", there are an estimated 200,000 pre-retirement "gappers" in the UK. They spend around £5,000 per trip, totalling an impressive £1bn per year.'
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