When you speak with Judith Wadson about the journey that brought her to the point of opening her business the phrase ?it?s never too late? comes to mind.

She has moved from being a journalist to chef to entrepreneur in the past 27 years, taking risks and changing careers in mid-stream to do so. At an age when some people are thinking of retirement, she is finally fulfilling a long-held a dream.

?I shall be 50 this year,? Ms Wadson, pictured right, says with a smile.

?I?m working really hard, but I had to do this now ? I don?t want to be in a rocking chair when I?m ninety regretting that I hadn?t done this.?

The business is Aggie?s Garden Cafe, a blink-and-you-might-miss-it eatery located on Pitts Bay Road in Hamilton. Aggie?s, which is named after Ms Wadson?s grandmother, seats just 20 people outside on an eclectic mix of garden furniture and park benches facing Hamilton harbour. The business also has a steady flow of take-out customers through the daily lunch period. The sit-down diners and walk-in trade are apparently attracted by the emphasis on fresh, locally grown ingredients used to prepare the items on the health-conscious menu.

?It?s very important to me to try and work with the freshest food and to be be creative while keeping things simple,? she says. ?And 90 percent of our ingredients are from here, which is also something I?m keen on.?

She says she wanted to make the most of the food that can be grown in Bermuda to create dishes that are both healthy and good to eat. It helps that she can get fresh food from her brother Tom?s farm, and she also works with local fishermen and other local outlets for ingredients. In addition to the meals she creates, Ms Wadson also bakes bread on the premises which is made and sold to order and used to make the sandwiches on the menu. And it appears that once people discover what she is quietly doing with food down on the harbourfront they return, and trade is building.

?We?re seeing more people coming in each week,? she says. ?And since the ?Food and Wine? piece we?re definitely seeing more visitors.?

She is referring to the very valuable exposure the cafe received in the June issue of ?Food and Wine? magazine in the US. In an article recommending several places to eat and visit here, Aggie?s was described as ?Bermuda?s most progressive new restaurant?, alongside a photo of Ms Wadson in ?baker mode?. This was a real coup for a business that has been open for less than a year in a notoriously difficult market. Given her background, Ms Wadson fully understands her good fortune.

?It?s really great, without a doubt,? she says. ?And it makes it even more important to keep working hard to maintain what I?ve been trying to do here.?

So how does someone who spent almost 20 years as a journalist wake up one morning and decide that they want to become a chef? Well it wasn?t quite an overnight decision, and before that her journalism career took her in very unexpected directions.

She started at in 1977 after graduating from the University of South Florida in Tampa with a journalism degree, and then promptly went to Paris in 1978 to learn French. She returned to Bermuda and the newspaper a year later and started to feel restless again soon afterwards.

?I realised I needed to see a bigger world and try to be a journalist in a bigger context,? she says. ?Eventually I wrote a travel-type piece about Bermuda and was lucky enough to have it accepted by the New York Times.?

On the strength of that article she decided to try her luck overseas and travelled to New York to look for work.

?I had no job lined up and no leads ? it was a bit crazy!? she says. ?But I really wanted to write for a magazine and was ready to try and make it happen.?

She decided to focus on trying to break into sailing magazines, based on her interest in the sport.

?What followed was months of odd jobs and sending query letters until I finally got a job at ?Sailing? magazine,? she says. ?It wasn?t a writing job, I was thrown in at the deep end to co-ordinate production for their supplements, but I took it with the prospect of being able to write eventually.?

Eighteen months later, she finally got her first writing position at the magazine, and it was worth the wait.

?My first assignment took me to New Zealand to cover sailing around North Island,? she says. ?I just never looked back after that.?

In her five years with the magazine she covered stories from around the world, including Turkey, Greece, the Caribbean, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Hawaii and Tonga.

?I didn?t make a lot of money, in fact I lived on a shoestring, but I had a wealth of experiences that I wouldn?t trade for anything,? she says.

When magazines started to consolidate in the late 1980s and her publication was sold three times in six months she decided to quit. She subsequently applied her writing skills in a variety of positions: in public relations for the Antigua Tourist Board, based in New York, and at the agency Hill and Knowlton on the Bermuda Tourism account; as deputy editor of a group of cruise ship industry publications; freelancing for a variety of travel guides including Fodors; and, back in Bermuda, co-ordinating communications for the Biological Station.

Having moved back to the US, this time to the West Coast, and after spending so many years being constantly on the move, she took some time to be still.

?I had reached a point in my life when I wanted to be centred,? she says. ?Writing, photography and food have always been my ?safe places?, and I realised that I wanted to turn my interest in cooking into something more.?

She started thinking seriously about becoming a chef, and wondering how she would pay to go back to school to achieve that goal.

?I ended up working as a personal assistant for a woman who is a multi-millionaire, and who shall remain nameless!? says Ms Wadson laughing. ?It was totally consuming and quite pressured at times, but it paid well enough in the end for me to have the funds to get me through culinary school.?

In 1996 she graduated with a Blue Ribbon honour at the age of 42 from what is now known as the Institute of Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kump?s New York Cooking School).

?It?s a school that is well-known for training people who have decided to switch gears in their careers, or who want to open their own restaurants but have not been in the industry,? she says.

She took her internship at the famous Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California and subsequently used her new skills as a food stylist for various companies and publications, including the Williams Sonoma catalogue.

?I got jobs because I had to,? she says. ?I would just literally pick up the phone and call people to see if they wanted help.?

When she eventually found her way home again to Bermuda, her dream to start a restaurant was deferred as she assessed what was going on in the market here. In the interim, she developed a new fresh/health food section for the Supermart on Front Street, did catering for private parties and gave cooking classes.

Late in 2002 the location for Aggie?s became vacant and she saw the opportunity to take action to make her restaurant a reality.

?I took the lease, said a prayer, went to the bank with my plan and got things started!? she says.

In the end the renovations were more extensive than she first thought, and three weeks after she opened Hurricane Fabian hit which meant being closed for a month because the building that houses Aggie?s was damaged.

?It was a setback, but we recovered well and it could have been worse,? she says philosophically. ?And I have never worked harder in my life! But I am very happy with how things are going.?

She does not plan to expand any time soon, but has recently introduced al fresco dinners every Saturday on a reservations only basis, and is planning to introduce Bermuda food baskets with items made from indigenous ingredients.

She admits that contemplating becoming an entrepreneur was ?scary?, even given her family?s long-standing business operations on the Island. But she says that taking the chance to be truly fulfilled overrode her fears.

?I?m not going to make a million dollars doing this but I need to go to sleep at night happy,? she says. ?I?ve learned things and developed skills along the way that are helping me now. I just feel that it?s never too late and it?s really important to follow your dreams.?