Many of you rumble me when I'm away and realise that I have put together blogs before I go. The reason I do this is quite simple - I don't want to advertise the fact I'm away from home. It comes from 17 years of giving out crime prevention advice I was working for the police.
Also preparing lots of blogs in advance and time lapsing them gives me something to read as, by the time they appear, I have forgotten what their content is, forgotten in what order they were written and forgotten how much waffle they involve.
I have written quite a few of them as I go along, however, without making any reference to being away. I have also been posting at different times of the day according to when I've been awake.
So yesterday's went on at around 3 am UK time. And of course time is a strange thing as I'm aware I have readers in USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (my Global family). I usually post at 6 am UK time which means early morning posts in the UK. But these will be late evening of the previous day in parts of America and even earlier morning in others and similar in Canada.
In Australia and New Zealand, it will be an early evening post. So a massive thank you to everyone who reads them at whatever time they arrive.
The coming days will be a real mix of usual style blogs alongside travel blogs with photographs of our journey through parts of Europe that seemed to go on and on. That's our journey and not Europe although I'm sure that does go on and on and on as well.
Safely back home we have plenty of memories to look back on from what may well be our longest trip ever and possibly our last marathon one. This one took in Spain, Portugal and France. It was almost three weeks of non stop travelling.
I know many of you enjoy my mini travelogues and I do try to interweave other bits and pieces within them. But they aren't meant to be histories of the places visited although some form of description is sometimes needed.
If you need to read about a place, you can look it up on the internet and perhaps my musings might encourage you to do that.
My travelogues are more about the incidents that have happened to us, the things that made us angry, the things that we found difficult and, of course, the things and the people who amused us because I do enjoy writing about the lighter side of travel.
I suppose you could say that I'm channelling my inner Bill Bryson. I love Bryson's caustic wit and the way he almost caricatures people and situations on his travels. In many ways I do the same. I once heard an interview with Bryson at the University of East Anglia and he came over as quite a serious chap and not the zany eccentric I had imagined.
I never met him, although for many years he lived about three miles away. I know somebody who stood behind him in the queue at Waitrose Supermarket once.
So tomorrow I will start the journey travelogue with a former award winning railway station and a trip down to a very cold and wet south coast ahead of jetting off for a right old road (or rather rail) trip.
The travelogue will have plenty of photographs to accompany it once I've downloaded them.