This fascination with kink and BDSM has been simmering there in the back of my mind as long as I can remember. I loved the imagery, the whips and black leather sophistication, the imagined sensuality and blissful submission.

I longed to dabble, explore and open myself up to it, but I was always much too skittish and self-conscious ever to step out of the outwardly vanilla persona that seems to have been assigned me in. childhood and which everybody has come to expect of me. If anyone had ever asked me my ultimate bucket list destination – and I was to bare all and answer truthfully – it would have been to explore this seductive world.

At long last I’m taking my first tentative steps. Chastity has been my gateway. I’d never even heard of it until a chance mention in a dinner party conversation. It struck a chord.

Fate and curiosity led me to the doors of House of Denial where a happy exchange of emails with Mistress K not only answered my newbie questions but put me so much at ease I found myself ordering my first cage as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The excitement of locking myself up and the rich emotional stew that followed from that was like rediscovering the joys of travel and exploration all over again.

I am my own keyholder, and very much a newcomer seeing all this with beginner’s eyes and like a good travel writer I am keen to write about it.