A WILDLIFE photojournalist is heading to Zambia to lead a tour for two weeks after travel restrictions were lifted.

The beginning of the lockdown was hard for Inger Vandyke from Clitheroe, who had planned to be leading wildlife tours in Tanzania, Morocco, Namibia, China, Chad and Antarctica.

But when all these plans were cancelled, 50-year-old Mrs Vandyke had to wait again till August 1 to take guests on her famous tours.

She said: “At the time the Covid-19 pandemic caused a national lockdown I was at the start of my biggest travel year of my career.

“In the first two months of this year I was working in the rugged, isolated Cape Horn Islands of southern Chile, on Easter Island, then the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and Antarctica.

“I went to Ethiopia straight after those trips to lead a tribal photography tour for a group of guests and the lockdown happened as soon as I got back from Addis Ababa.”

The photographer only recently returned from a Kenya tour, giving her more than two weeks to quarantine before her next trip.

She said: “I was leading two separate photography tours for our company Wild Images.

“The first one was a tour to see the Great Migration of Wildebeest across the Mara and Serengeti ecosystems.

“The second was a photographic safari for big cats and other wildlife in the Olare Motorogi Conservancy, one of the private conservatories that abuts the Masai Mara National Reserve of Kenya.”

Mrs Vandyke has previously lived in Australia, before meeting her fiancé in 2012, when she moved to Clitheroe in 2013.

She has become a leading authority on wildlife photography, as a founding Charter Member of Ocean Geographic, a regular contributor to Africa Geographic and Geographical, the journal of the Royal Geographical Society of which she is a fellow.

She said: “I had a very unusual childhood, growing up on a fishing trawler on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

“From a very young age, and through incredible parents, I’ve felt a great connection to all living things, be they my fellow people, wildlife above and below the water or wild spaces. I am more at home outside than I am indoors.”

The coronavirus safety measures in Kenya also assured Mrs Vandyke and her group that they were travelling without any risks.

She said: “In Kenya, the protocols for control of Covid19 are excellent.

“We actually felt safer with the protocols in Kenya than we do here in the UK.”