Gosh, it was hot here in Sydney yesterday. 42 degrees Celsius is not the most comfortable of climatic conditions and the city sweltered. With such a prediction I headed for the beach with a friend at 0700, when the cool sea breeze was much in evidence. However, by mid-morning we headed home to the air-conditioning. In contrast the temperature to-day is exactly half of what it was yesterday and the drizzle will hopefully extinguish the bushfires north of Sydney. The NSW country town of Coonamble holds the record for the hottest Australian November day which was 46.1 deg.

I am planning my next trip away - to Spain. Not your usual holiday, I am seriously considering walking the 800 km Camino Frances, the ancient pilgrimage route from St-John Pied de Port, at the base of the Pyrenees in France, to the tomb of the Apostle St James in Santiago de Compostela in Galacia in north-east Spain. I will have to do it on my own as I canot think of even one friend who would be interested in walking 800 kilometres. It will take over 1 month to complete and I am busy gathering as much information as I can from people who have already walked this route. It will be a great spiritual, mental and physical challenge and I will soon discover if I have what it takes to complete this long journey successfully. The route will be crowded at peak times next year as it is a Holy Year in Spain. However, I plan to depart around mid-May so I can miss the rush. I can’t wait.

What a great title for a book! And this is a very famous hat - quite old for a piece of millinery, this hat has been on the road for decades and has had many adventures, including the one below. Can you imagine the following happening to-day - Her Majesty the Queen lost in a souq?

Travels with My Hat by Christine Osborne
`I was looking everywhere for your blue hat`said the Queen to Christine on the
royal visit to the great souq in Nizwa, Oman. Ethiopia, Iraq and Pakistan are other
colorful countries visited by the Sydney nurse, turned photojournalist of 30 years
of travel adventures in Africa and the East. `I`ve occasionally wished I was a boy.
Not for the penis per se but for the freedom it allows a man,` writes Christine of
Yemen, the secretive mountain republic on the Red Sea. 95,000 words with
photographs by the author. Publication autumn 2010. copix@clara.co.uk

Worth keeping an eye out for.

To-day is the day that the whole of Australia comes to a standstill to listen to the running of the great horserace – the Melbourne Cup. However, this year I swapped the sweep, the champagne lunch and a couple of trifecta tickets for a meeting with an author visiting here from the UK. And, as always when I meet with an author the time was well spent. Sharing someone’s travel and writing experiences is a great motivator – to do more travelling and more writing. In fact a friend of mine from Brisbane (who once landed a great job on the Greek island of Corfu) is going back there with her husband to live, for 3 months, next year. And my husband and I have been invited to join them – what a lovely friend!
I have never been to Corfu but I am reliably informed that it is the ‘greenest’ Greek island and noted for receiving the most rainfall in the country. It is said to be one of the most beautiful places in Greece and according to my newly purchased guidebook the countryside is carpeted with over 3 milliion olive trees, cypress groves and citrus orchards. A wealth of history and medieval architecture, churches and an ancient monastery or two, walking trails, boats, beaches and sea-front tavernas sounds irresistibly enticing.