I decided to take a trip down to South-west England for a few days. I hired a car and drove many miles through many counties including Wiltshire, Devon, and Cornwall. Highlights included: • Salisbury (Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral, and the ruins of Old Sarum) • Other castles/building ruins including Old Waldour castle and Tintagel (supposed birthplace of King Arthur) and Glastonbury Abbey (supposed burial place of King Arthur) • Other castles in better repair including Dartmouth Castle, Pendennis Castle (Falmouth) and the Roman baths and Abbey in Bath • Other towns/vistas including Dartmouth, Penzance and Bath. • Seeing baskin sharks just off the beach at Falmouth. • Other quirky bits like the town of Glastonbury - just filled with new age weirdos. So much so that it was difficult locating a pub to watch Portugal defeat England! ... read more

No, I have not gone home just yet, simply visited the Devon version of my home town. This blog is basically for my parents and friends who grew up in Torquay so I apologise to the rest of you for the many local references that you may not fully appreciate. Torquay is part of the area known locally as the "British Riviera". Well, having not been to the French version, I cannot comment on the accuracy of this claim but I think it may be a stretch. The town itself reminded me more of an even further commercialised version of Lorne rather than the Torquay of my youth. For example, Torquay has a casino! The interesting thing for me was that St Luke’s church dominated the skyline from the beach. Torquay, Victoria’s version of St Luke's ... read more

My 5 days in Stuttgart were definitely dominated by World Cup fever. I stayed with Juergen whom I had met on my Interdominion trip (major Australasian harness race carnival) in New Zealand last year. I arrived Wednesday afternoon and had a few hours to kill before Juergen joined me at the main train station in Stuttgart. The downtown area was teaming with Spanish fans (they were to play the following day), German fans (they were playing Poland that evening elsewhere in Germany) and assorted others. I spent so much time snapping away with my camera and generally people watching. It was sensational. There was a designated ‘fan fest’ area with huge TV screens that was fenced off, but free to enter, it was just that you had to leave your own food and drinks behind. And ... read more

The final few days of the Moroccan tour included seeing some cedar forests (I felt like I could have been in Canada rather than Morocco), some Barbary apes (same as the ones I saw in Gibraltar), receiving an interesting information session about the Muslim religion from our tour guide, visiting a ceramic factory and a tannery in Fes - great city - and eating a McArabia. Yes, that is correct, several of us visited McDonalds to taste the localised version of the Big Mac - main difference being it was served in pita bread rather than a bun! Also visited Meknes. The highlight for me there was visiting the former stables of Moulay Ismail. At one time, he had 12,000 horses stabled there. Unfortunately, the Lisbon earthquake had knocked down the roof, but the rest of ... read more

After a bus ride from Cordoba, I arrived in Algeciras to find what I had expected but not what I had hoped for. It is a port town with nothing much else to see or do. As a result, my 2 day stay consisted of a day trip to Gibraltar and some walking, emailing and telephoning in Algeciras. Gibraltar was strange. An eclectic mix of UK and Spain. The rock was large, the gondala expensive, the barbary apes way too tame seeing as I had to dislodge one off my backpack! but I did enjoy walking the length of the place and seeing the lighthouse and mosque at the eastern end.... read more