Heather's travel tales 2023: December 31 what happened next?

What's been happening in the three month between arriving home and the end of this travel-packed year? We haven't been idle - surprise surprise! Here are a few images.

Taking great pleasure in our green space

A bunch of parsley flowers

Walking the neighbourhood enjoying the street and river-scapes. Watching the plants grow - with daily inspection of the passionfruit vine which has a good load of green fruit on it - and watching the insects enjoy our wee sky-rise garden. Doing masses of cooking - and eating! and jam making etc; basically filling the larder and freezer (some of the latter in preparation for a caravan journey in February-March). Lots of time spent catching up with family and friends. Feeding our minds with interesting new things - author talks and seminars from topics ranging from Persian food to interstellar chemistry. Visited art galleries - even did an art class!

We pulled back on our volunteering work to spend time getting ourselves well and back in tip-top condition - still working on that! And instead have taken on a less physically demanding job of coordinating seminars for the Graduate Union of University of Melbourne. Next year will be a mixture of travel adventures - Feb-March caravanning to explore more of our home State, taking a couple of weeks in April to drive north to Northern NSW and Qld to visit friends we haven't seen for years and then 3 weeks in June visiting family and friends in WA. The 'biggie' will be 2 months travelling firstly across the very top of the world to reach the two North Poles, then a 10 day self-drive trip around the Faroes Islands (yes they have bridges and ferries!) and we will finish off with 3 weeks in a campervan driving from Scotland through Wales and into Cornwall and before flying home we will catch up with people we've met on a couple of expeditions over the last few years. Really looking fwd to it.