Lord Howe
There are lots of tourists on Lord Howe at the moment, most of them riding bikes, most of them over 50, and everyone is rugged up because - it is not warm! In fact I think every second person looks just like me! So imagine my surprise yesterday, when I was riding happily along the road and a ute pulled up, with a cheery grey-haired man beaming from the driver's window. "Are you off the boat moored in the lagoon?" Well yes...but how did he know?? (I have thought about it since and the only identifying feature would have been - my bike! Everyone other than Pete and me is on a hired mountain bike. So he wasn't exhibiting ESP after all.) He asked me lots of questions and very swiftly exhausted my knowledge of the details of 2XS...I told him we would all be at the cafe around dinner time if he would like to join us, and promptly forgot all about this meeting.

But at dinner, there he was, still beaming, and full of information and questions for Pete, John, Nick and Steve, who could all answer in more detail than I could. Bill has lived on Lord Howe for 25 years so he is practically a local... There are only 350 permanent residents, and they only allow 400 visitors at a time - this is a World Heritage site, and very strictly controlled. He has invited us to his place and we are all very keen - Pestering Bill is on our agenda! He has an even bigger cat, also moored in the lagoon, and a beautiful accommodation place, Rajilla, I think, which is being renovated as we speak.

We had a lovely dinner before chuffing back to the boat in the tender - it takes two trips, ofcourse - even three is a big load for this little boat... We left our bikes and hemets on a rack at the beach and there they were in the morning, faithfully waiting, un-stolen.

My computer time is about to run out...I am finding it quite stressful; the screen goes blank every 20 minutes and the keyboard is weird... So I will come back tomorrow and tell you some more stuff about Lord Howe and life bobbing around on 2XS.