You may be wondering this very thing! How does an Australian travel brand, particularly a niche travel brand such as Fencox, have a connection with a remote, hilltop Sicilian town halfway around the world?

Let’s answer this by going back a couple of steps! We’re going to put two words in front of you: Leatherback Travel. 

Leatherback Travel is an Australian-based, primarily culture-and-adventure-driven travel company that has, at the time of publishing, five distinct travel brands – of which Fencox happens to be one.

Fencox fills a niche that we found had been crying out to be noticed! It’s for the mature adventure traveller wanting private-room-only trips.

How do we know this? Because these were the learnings from three of our other small-group travel brands under Leatherback Travel, in this order:

• First brand: Patch Adventures – women-only adventure travel for mature women, often travelling alone and happy to meet others.

• Brand number two: Camino Women – also women-only, however catering to the more active-adventure woman with multi-day hikes, and slightly younger than our Patchies.

• Brand number three: Magnificent Rail – states the obvious, but trips that feature as many rail-related adventures that can be mustered up, and is popular amongst mature couples.

• Brand number four: Fencox – we found that many of our Patchies were asking for private-room supplements as the brand continued to grow, and the few we had available would get snapped up very quickly. It was a no-brainer, especially when they started to say “I can’t do twin-share!”, or “It’s a non-negotiable!” This was also the chance for all the solo men who’d been asking about our trips to get on board.

• Brand number five: is barely out of the oven at time of publishing... but we can say that it involves lots of green space and loads of colour.
  
  

What about Sicily?!

We didn’t forget! That part’s coming now. But first, we need to mention the founders of Leatherback Travel and all the brands:

Husband and wife team Mat and Rebeca Newton.  

They’ve worked in the travel industry well before starting their own business and have just celebrated the first five years of Patch Adventures!

Now it’s Salemi’s turn to enter the picture. Salemi, in western Sicily, was the winning location for Mat and Rebecca’s passion project – the one you might know as Salemi Ceramics! The urge for a creative project simply unravelled the moment Mat discovered the ‘dying’ town of Salemi on a website, back in Australia. 

So there you have it! The connection, a rather strong one to boot. And don’t be surprised if you see Fencox, and other Leatherback guests, pop up one day in Salemi – as part of a Leatherback adventure.