Carol Kirkwood feels like she’s “living the dream”.
But the 64-year-old hasn’t won the lottery – although she almost feels like she has – she’s simply retired and is having the time of her life.
The chirpy Scot called time on her job as a weather presenter for BBC Breakfast in April, and since then she says she’s been busy doing the things she’s always wanted to do, along with her second husband, Steve Randall, who she married in 2023.
But Kirkwood, who was a BBC weather presenter for 28 years, primarily on BBC Breakfast, didn’t retire because she’d had enough of her high-profile TV career. “I loved being a weather presenter. I loved my job, and it was my choice to leave, because I love my husband more, and we want to do things together,” she tells the Press Association.
“I’m living the dream, I’m loving it. What they say about retirement is absolutely true though – you seem to be busier than you were when you were working, and I don’t know how that works out, but it’s great!”
Kirkwood explains that she’s not getting up at 2:45am for work any more, and has free weekday evenings for the first time in many years, so she can go to the cinema, the theatre, go out for meals, and stay up late.
And not only that, but she and Randall, who’s “50+” and also retired, have already started travelling, which was part of their big retirement plan.
“It’s brilliant, I’m really, really enjoying it,” enthuses Kirkwood.
“I miss my colleagues on BBC Weather and BBC Breakfast, but of course they’re my friends, so we’re still in touch. And I’ll never not look at the weather – it’s a part of my DNA.
“I miss my job to a point, but I have so much freedom now, and I’m living to my timetable and my schedule rather than anybody else’s – that’s liberating.”
What’s added to that feeling, she says, is that both she and Randall have had comprehensive Bupa health assessments to be as sure as possible that future issues aren’t going to scupper their retirement plans.
She explains that both she and her husband have sadly lost family and friends to cancer recently, saying: “We’ve lost a lot of people – life is short.
“I want to try and prolong my life as long as I can and live healthy and happily ever after, as the old saying goes.
“I’m 64 now, and I want to enjoy my life, and I really do believe the best is yet to come, because I’m not dancing to somebody else’s tune.”
Happily, all the couple’s physical, blood and heart test results taken during the health assessment were normal, although Kirkwood says: “One thing it highlighted that I was quite surprised about was my fitness level. I walk a lot – and I don’t just saunter, I march when I walk – and I’m doing the Couch to 5k again, and I’ve started doing weight training again, so I thought ‘I’m going to be fit’.
“Well, I was average fitness, but only just. And so that’s given me something to work on. I want it to be better than average. I want to be strong, and after you’ve exercised, you do feel strong. So that’s why I try and do as much now as I can.”
She says the doctor asked if she was doing any exercises to help build the muscles in her thighs, which can be important in the event of hip problems or falls in later life.
“So, guess what? Now I’m doing lunges, which I hate, and squats, which I hate even more. I’m doing them because it’s all for my own benefit – I want to live a long, healthy life, so I’m doing all I can to make that happen.
“Prevention is better than the cure, and I’m not displaying any symptoms of anything that I’m aware of at the moment.”
Although her test results were normal, Kirkwood says having the assessment made her consider what she eats.
“I’m trying to be more mindful of my chocolate consumption – I really do love chocolate,” she admits. “Nothing was said about that, because my cholesterol was fine, and my BMI was perfectly healthy. But I’m just trying to be a bit healthier.”
At home, she says: “We tend to follow a Mediterranean diet – we eat a lot of clean food, and we don’t tend to eat ultra-processed food. Generally speaking, we cook from scratch.”
The couple’s healthy lifestyle and encouraging results from their health assessment meant they could begin their retirement travelling with no niggling health worries, so they’ve been to the US and Italy already.
“It’s a case of, what are we waiting for?” says Kirkwood. “Steve and I want to travel – that’s one of our life’s ambitions.
“We’re big fans of The Eagles, and they’re doing a long farewell tour around the world, and they were playing in Las Vegas at The Sphere, but we could just never get the dates to work because of annual leave. And then just as I was about to retire, they announced some more dates which we could do because we then had all the free time in the world. So we booked it and went.
“Oh my goodness, it was fabulous! And then we went to Matera in southern Italy, which is a really fascinating place, and then to Venice. So we’re doing all right for holidays.”
And that’s just the start of their travelling – Nashville, Graceland, New Orleans, the Taj Mahal and India’s Golden Triangle, and a return to Australia are all on their travel bucket list.
“Before, like everyone if they’re working, we were restricted by annual leave,” she says. “But now we don’t have that restriction any more, so if we want to go somewhere like Australia, we’d go for much longer. So we definitely do have a travel bucket list.”
The couple won’t be travelling all the time, of course, but Kirkwood is so happy with life at the moment that she’s even enthused by the mundane chores at home.
“There’s no time to be bored,” she insists. “There are jobs that you think ‘I’ll do that when I retire, because I’ll have more time,’ so now we’re having to do all the jobs that we put off until we’re retired.
“So you paint a room, and at the end of it you think ‘Yay, we did that, it looks not too bad actually’. Or I did loads of planters that have all blossomed now, and they’re so pretty and colourful, and it’s nice sitting in the garden having a little glass of wine, just admiring the flowers.
“So there’s joy in everything you do, if you look for it.”
Carol Kirkwood is working with Bupa to encourage people to stay healthy and active in later life.
