TEN years since this article first appeared in the Advertiser's pages, we take a look back at Cameron Watson's story as he prepared to set off on the trip of a lifetime in April 2009.

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A LOVE of football and the urge to travel has taken a well known local lad to Cardross church for a fund-raising ceilidh.

Cameron Watson, 19, is popular at Ardardan Estate where he has worked for four years but soon he is off to Ghana for a month.

The staunch Dumbarton FC fan loves football and travel and was looking for a way to combine the two when he came across Real Gap, the UK’s largest gap year travel company, sending thousands of people to hundreds of projects and programmes around the world, including volunteering, community work, conservation, teaching English, adventure travel, sports and expeditions.

He found a project in Ghana which uses football to teach and enhance the lives of impoverished children and decided to spend a month of his summer break with them.

He will be based in Accra, Ghana’s capital and will be living with a local host family.

“I don’t know yet who it is,” he said this week.

And continued: “I could be living in a house with running water but I might just as easily be staying in a mud hut. I will find out when I get there.”