My mother, Lyn Palmer, who has died aged 76, was a primary school teacher who later moved into business consultancy, running her own company, Kingsbridge Allan, for 25 years.
Born in Liverpool, Lyn was the daughter of Sally (nee Roberts), a civil servant, and Kevin Burke, a merchant seaman. She went to Bootle grammar school and then to Chester teacher training college (now part of Chester University), where she met John Palmer, a fellow student, in her first week there. They were married in 1970.
John became an outdoor education instructor, and together they embraced adventure, moving first to the north-east of Scotland, where Lyn became a primary school teacher in Burghead, and then, in 1973, to Bermuda, where she did early years teaching at Bermuda high school for girls. Enjoying Bermuda’s proximity to the Americas and the freedom of school holidays, they explored North and South America, skiing in New England and visiting Peru and Bolivia.
On the lookout for their next adventure, Lyn and John returned home in 1976, but did it the “long way”, on a journey that took them to the west coast of the US, through south east Asia, Afghanistan and the foothills of the Himalayas.
They then both worked at Clachaig Inn, a climbers’ hostelry in Glencoe, with John running the bar and Lynn in charge of the kitchen. Later they moved to Bala in Gwynedd, north Wales, where in 1978 Lyn started a psychology degree with the Open University, afterwards completing an MBA. She went on to teach on the OU’s MBA programme in the late 1990s and subsequently became a tutor on various OU courses, specialising in creative management.
In 1996 she combined her understanding of the business world with her insights into the human mind to build Kingsbridge Allan, which she led until her retirement in 2011, working with a wide variety of clients, from small companies around the north-east of Wales to big businesses such as Mars and Coca-Cola. Within Kingsbridge Allan she also worked as a counsellor, helping individual clients to overcome personal, professional and emotional hurdles.
In 2013 Lyn was diagnosed with dementia, but she never allowed it to curtail her lust for life. With John at her side, over the following 10 years she travelled extensively, visiting Vietnam, North America, Russia, Scandinavia and various parts of Europe.
She is survived by John, her sons, Tim and me, and granddaughters Zoë and Imogen.
