The road less travelled...

Well, thank you, LJ, that's been generally useless!

So, what have I been up to for the past four days? Honestly, mostly travel. I am now in the UK and have left Austria behind. On my last full day there (Dec 31) I went around Pertisau seeing it all, taking photos, etc. The wonderful part came at midnight when every hotel, pension, gasthof, etc set off their fireworks at midnight so for about 20 mins the entire lakeside was just a huge burst of colour.

Welcome, 2013!

Jan 1 was a day of travelling - bus to the station, train to the airport, plane, then more buses. Luckily all the connections worked and I arrived safely at my hotel.

Jan 2 gave me the joy of picking up my hire car - no more schlepping around on foot! - and headed off for lunch with the lovely ladies behind Girls Gone By Publishers. Later that evening I headed to the house of my Chalet School editor, who had kindly invited me to stay. All in all, it was a very book-y day.

Jan 3 (today) has been no less so! I went first to Hay-on-Wye, which is Britain's Booktown, and then in Hereford. The latter is, of course, the setting for about half of the British-era Chalet books. I only arrived here at about 3pm, but went and did the walked version of the journey described in Highland Twins. I am also staying in the Green Dragon (called the Golden Dragon in Three Goes) so I am thoroughly immersed.

And that's that! Tomorrow I head into Scotland. I'm hoping to drive from Hereford to Aberdeen, which is almost 500 miles. The AA route planner predicts this will take almost 9 nine hours. People I have spoken to say it will take more than 10. We'll see. I don't feel too bad about it, but I could always stay in Glasgow (only 350 miles) for a night instead, although that will mean a lot of driving on Saturday instead.

We'll see...