RACHEL Lowe pulled up to a set of traffic lights in her taxi. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. She had plans. A bright young woman, she was going to go to university to study law and become a top barrister.

Eventually she would have a little home in the country with roses in the garden.

But while she was at college, she fell pregnant, having her first daughter at 18. The dreams had to be put away to make space for the urgent reality of providing for her daughter, and driving a cab offered an income.

She had her second daughter at 23, and put all her energy into providing for her young family.

"I didn't think ahead that much when I was a cabbie," says Rachel, from Hampshire. "My main concern was earning enough money to put food in the cupboards and electric on the meter."

But all that was set to change - and it started with that set of traffic lights. "I sat at the lights and it popped into my head, Red light - miss a turn'. I imagined my taxi being a miniature playing piece on a board. That was how it started."

These daydreams became the foundation of the Destination board games that have gone on to become Hamleys' best-seller, are now available in 15 different editions - and have made Rachel a millionaire at 30.

But she had a long and bumpy road to follow from first having the idea of a board game in which you move around the streets of a city with a taxi playing piece to where she is today. This has included becoming technically insolvent as well as being given a roasting on BBC2 show Dragons' Den.

For many people Rachel's idea would have been no more than that - an entertaining daydream which was soon forgotten.

But her entrepreneurial spirit and bright mind seized on the idea. She made a prototype of the game and sent it off to major toy manufacturers, but without success.

"I was gutted that no one was interested," remembers Rachel. In the meantime, she had discovered that she could dust off her dream of becoming a barrister by going to university as a mature student to study law.

"Going back to university made me realise that I wasn't just a mum," says Rachel, who returned to education aged 25. "I started to find my identity again - I'm Rachel Lowe, and I've got a head on my shoulders."

While she was at Portsmouth University Rachel spotted an Enterprise Challenge advert, which offered money to the best new business ideas and entered her Destination game.

"I won about £3,000 and I felt like I was completely loaded," she says enthusiastically. "I set up my company but I had to raise a lot more money. In the scheme of things, £3,000 was nothing - it wasn't even enough to pay for the illustration."

The Destination game takes players on a tour of a city, visiting well-known landmarks. It struck Rachel that as several businesses would be featured on the board it made sense to approach them for sponsorship.

"At my first meeting I had on this old suit that I'd worn to a funeral five years before and I was so nervous," she remembers.

"It was in this really posh office and we had a bone china tea set. I was trembling as I was trying to pick up the sugar."

Luckily, her years as a cabbie had taught her to overcome her nerves.

"Before I was a cab driver I was quite shy but you get over that," she says. "When we were growing up, we were told to talk properly. When I started driving people would say, You don't sound as if you should be driving a cab.' In the end I'd go all right babe, how's it going?' when people got into the car. That kind of personable approach helped me out in business."

It was while she was looking for funding that she heard of a new show, Dragons' Den, which was inviting entrepreneurs who needed funding to pitch their ideas.

"They filmed me for Dragons' Den on September 8, 2004," she says, the date clearly burnt into her memory.

"By then I'd already raised the funding and Destination London and Destination Portsmouth were being manufactured. I thought I'd done quite well.

"But they just ripped it to shreds. I cried on the way home. It was the worst feeling ever. At the time I was completely gutted and couldn't imagine how anything good could possibly come out of it.

"With hindsight, the show was the best thing that could have happened. I got to prove them wrong. I was the underdog. The show is repeated quite often and I always get more sales from it."

It hasn't been easy all the way for Rachel since this early success. For a time she was studying for her degree, being a mum, working on Destination and still driving her cab at nights.

An extremely hard year followed. She turned down offers of investment because she was protective of the game, which she later realised was a mistake.

The following January she found herself technically insolvent, which could not only have left her business dead in the water, but also have rendered her hard-earned law degree useless - anyone who has been declared bankrupt cannot practice law.

"I owed a lot of money and I didn't know how I was going to pay it back," she remembers. "It was a dark time." Luckily her hard work paid off and business picked up.

Her own life has taught her more than once that there could be a surprise round the next bend, and hard work and a contingency plan rather than blind faith are what will get you beyond it.

  • Bournemouth businesses are being invited to sponsor Destination Bournemouth from £500. For more information, contact Howard Watson at Leepeckgreenfield on 023 8076 9988 or by email at howard.watson@lpgf.com
  • For more information about the Destination games, visit the link below.