Gary Long wants to feel under pressure. Sweaty palms, racing heart, sick feeling in the stomach. That kind of thing. I'm told he's one of those people who finds it difficult to sit still even for a few minutes, which would go some way towards explaining his part in one of Norfolk's thriving catering businesses; one that demands a 100-hour working week and offers very little time for a social life.

Certainly this level of pressure would facify the biggest stress-seeker but it seems this 31-year-old businessman is looking for that little extra something: a voyage of discovery.

And it's about to start: tomorrow Gary will leave his job, business interests and home in Holt, and family in Sheringham, to begin an adventure of a lifetime.

The journey gets off the ground, quite literally, with a cheap flight to Cancun in Mexico.

From there he'll spend nine months travelling around central and South America - Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Belize, Panama and Columbia to name but a few countries - before settling, probably, somewhere in Honduras.

It's an area he knows well and one that he believes will make the ideal location for his first solo project: a 12-bedroom hostel and café-cum-restaurant nestled among the palm trees and white sandy beaches of the Caribbean coastline.

It certainly beats the typical New Year resolution.

"I'm going out looking for a change of life, an adventure that's going to throw me in a different direction and it's something I've wanted to do for years," he explains.

"The worst thing for me would be to grow old and have nothing to talk about when I can't get out of my armchair."

In fact, there seems to be little chance of that happening.

It was while Gary was on his last big trip taking in the sights and sounds of Miami and South America that his sister Clair and brother-in-law, Iain Wilson, telephoned to ask if he fancied returning to Norfolk to open a new family business in Holt.

Tired of walking the earth and eager to take a new direction in life, he agreed and subsequently helped to create one of the most successful names in Norfolk's catering business: Byfords Café, Deli and Posh B&B in Holt.

Lesser beings may have politely declined their offer, particularly when it became clear they needed to double the takings in order to break even, but Gary, Iain and Clair knew they could make it work.

They bought the café, the three flats above the shop and, finally, the deli next door, working round the clock to make it a success.

"What we've managed to do at Byfords has been fantastic. We've had an incredible team and it has been a big team effort," Gary explains. "When it started off, none of us thought it would evolve the way it did and it's purely because of Iain's love of development and creating an experience that it has been so phenomenally successful."

In the last eight years, since opening Byfords, the trio has added The Pigs at Edgefield to their business empire in a partnership with another celebrated name in Norfolk culinary circles, Richard Hughes.

And last year they bought Holt's high street boozer, the King's Head.

Gary says: "My role has generally been to go into a new part of the business and get things going, get the team there, the right attitude and help to develop the business, and then step out and let them move it forward."

Iain and Gary first worked together at The Brewery House in Reepham, and theirs has proved a formidable partnership over the ensuing years.

"Iain's the most fabulous person to work with let alone be related to, and he's been an incredible influence on my life.

"He's the facts and figures of the operation and I'm the front of house, the mouth if you like; the smiley talker repeating all the important stuff that Iain talks about,"says Gary, laughing.

I wonder if he's selling himself short, certainly the numbers of people who stop at our table to wish him well on his travels during the course of our conversation suggest the former Sheringham High School pupil has left an indelible mark on Holt.

Gary may have left sooner had it not been for the new enterprises, The Pigs and the King's Head, and although he says it would have been easy to stick around and help develop the "half a dozen projects tearing around Iain's head", that's not his ambition.

"I have to run off and fill my life with experiences, and it was pretty evident when I first went away travelling that opportunities were pretty endless when I travelled."

Indeed this latest international adventure isn't his first; after dropping out of his final year at college in King's Lynn, he left the UK for a nine-month stint on the summer work scheme, Camp America.

Up until eight years ago, when he returned to Norfolk to help launch Byfords, Gary had combined large spells of travelling around Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, North America, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, the Bay Islands, Honduras, India, Kenya and Europe with an assortment of jobs in the hospitality industry.

But there's something about South America and his desire to travel the world that he can't turn his back on.

"The first time I went out there, I knew it was right for me. I felt quite productive there.

"I've worked my backside off for eight years to make this happen, and I think in the catering industry you really do need something to work towards."

Before he opens his new business Gary plans to travel for eight months or so, improve his Spanish in the process and involve himself in community projects before heading home for a few weeks, thereby avoiding the hurricane season, and catch up with family and friends.

He's set to begin developing his new business in November and imagines it will be a series of traditional huts situated on a well-connected beach front location, naturally, on a couple of acres on land and be complete with a bar and restaurant on the main road.

The business will also offer history tours, language lessons, diving classes.

"It needs to be something that's locally supported - for me to go out there with a couple of quid in my pocket and buy something to attract westerners and travellers just wouldn't work, and I'd probably have my windows smashed in within a fortnight," he says.

Despite his success here, Gary insists this latest South American adventure will really put him to the test, and without the safety net of friends and family and their advice in running a business - his parents own Pungleperry's Café in Sheringham but have been in business all his life.

"If I didn't do this I wouldn't find out how I'd operate under pressure, and I need to understand my capabilities a bit more and be alone because I don't feel I've done anything to achieve what we have.

"I suppose it's a bit extreme going to the other side of the planet - I have a battle with myself most nights when I lie in bed and think, what am I doing?

"I have absolutely everything here - a nice little house, a great job, investments in some of the best catering businesses in Norfolk and loads of friends but I want to pack it all in; I don't understand it but I do know I have to do it because I need to feel scared and nervous again, collapse in a corner and probably lose everything," he tells me.

Devoting all his time and energy to work has left little time for a personal life, and as a result he's been single for the past six years.

His impending move will give him more time to meet people and, who knows, perhaps find love.

And although other people may consider it a brave move, and indeed tell him as much, Gary insists it involves very little risk.

"I have more security in my family than anything else, and knowing that I have them to come back to if everything goes pear-shaped means it doesn't matter," he explains.

He hopes friends and family will travel out to see him and is looking forward to spending time with them away from their businesses.

In fact, it seems there's already talk of a few friends hiring a Jumbo jet to fly out half of Norfolk to see him when he's settled.

"I'm sad to leave because I've made some incredible friends and my family are here, and it's been an incredible experience at Byfords. I certainly don't take anything for granted because it's taken a lot of hard work.

"Everybody I know is excited and supportive and I think they know why I'm doing it.

"There's a lot of the world I want to see and I think I'll always be in a frame of mind to travel.

"I'd love to realise the image I have in my head on this trip but it may not happen and I don't have any qualms about breaking those dreams; you never know, I may end up running a cruise liner," he says, laughing.

Even though it was said in jest, judging from his sense of adventure and enthusiasm for whatever life may throw at him, absolutely anything is possible.

As a matter of fact, we end the conversation by discussing Gary and his father's latest find on the internet: a 90ft "put-put thing" for sale at $195,000 in which he could sail around the islands off the Caribbean.

"I could do that," he says. "Live on a boat for a few years, just exist, getting fat and hairy. What's wrong with that?"

"Sounds great."

I couldn't agree more.