The Maggie May hitmaker proposed during a trip to Paris in 2005 and they got married in Portofino, Italy, in 2007. Just last year they took a yacht around the Caribbean to mark Rod’s 80th birthday surrounded by their closest family members. But it is an African nation that Penny says has her “heart and soul”.
On the LNER Routes podcast Penny revealed she even jokes to sons Alastair, 19, and Aiden, 14, that she is “going to end up there”. Penny said: “Tanzania, that’s one place that really…my heart and soul is there
“I said to the boys when we got to take them there the second time round, ‘If you ever want to know where mum is going to end up, this is the place.’”
When asked what she enjoys about the country, Penny replied: “It’s the culture, and the light, as a photographer it’s stunning. I first went with Rod, before I had children, and I remember him etching a heart and our initials into a tree.
“Before he said I love you he wrote it in a tree. So it was all very romantic. It was like those movies, kind of whisked away in your safari outfits across the Serengeti, and we said when we do have children, we must take them back and we did.
“We got to learn about the local tribes and the schools and my eldest would love to go back. Not just for the animals but just, it really touched him too.”
Penny and Rod reportedly stopped at the luxurious Mwiba Lodge when they visited the east African nation with their family. The property is said to be set in a 51,000-acre wildlife reserve.
As well as taking in Mount Kilimanjaro and the Serengetti, Penny says the family had a chance to learn about the Mwiba tribe. During the trip, Penny shared a photo of herself encountering an elephant while on safari.
Writing in The Times, she described her trips to Tanzania as “the best”. She continued: “We stayed at the Mwiba Lodge and visited the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti, flew over Mount Kilimanjaro, and got up early each morning to watch the animals at sunrise.
“It was wonderful. Rod and I had been on safari before we had kids, so the best bit was seeing it through our sons’ eyes. They were blown away.”
Penny will be joining Alan Titchmarsh on Love Your Weekend from 9.30am on ITV One. She will be a guest on the show alongside Olympian Max Whitlock.