An article on a national travel website thinks it may have discovered the person with the best job in the world!

When you’re travelling the world, a huge part of discovering a place is discovering its cuisine, which is something that Christopher ‘Welshy’ Wilkinson, as a member of Topdeck Travel has done for ten years...eating the world’s best food and getting paid for it along the way!

Chris, who hails from East Williamston, and is a former student of Tenby’s Greenhill School and Pembrokeshire College, has been head of catering at Topdeck since 2013.

An article on www.flightcentre.co.uk explains how it’s Chris’s job to find the best restaurants, dishes and cookery classes for the touring company’s many itineraries – which take holidaymakers all over the globe.

“I help oversee all food experiences that are enjoyed by our global touring passengers - on any given week I could be sourcing the best pasty in Cornwall, restaurants for Thanksgiving in New York, adapting food safety catering policies in Africa and looking after our 40 Topdeck chefs who are running our sites and camping trips in Europe,” said Chris, who explained that he wanted to get into catering since the age of four, as he wanted a food truck in Wales.

“The idea of getting out and about, bringing my food to people, has been the core of my catering life. Meeting people, cooking them the best of local food and having the chance to be part of their memories for life is an honour; what’s better than a full belly and a lot of laughs?!

“Catering in the travel industry has opened the kitchen doors to a whole world of hungry people craving memorable and authentic food experiences. I’m fully aware that our thousands of passengers save for a long time and rightly have high expectations, and it’s our mission to deliver that with fork in hand and a smile every day.

“This job has allowed me to cook and eat the finest and freshest local dishes all around the world, getting paid to live a life that other chefs can only dream of when they are stuck in one place.

“I still love the idea of a food truck, but right now I’m collecting recipes from my travels and putting them into my cookery book!” he continued.

Asked if he could only eat one thing for the rest of his life, Chris chose Welsh cakes! “They’re the teatime treat that I have been brought up on!” he added.