A week today Jennifer and I fly out to London, then Portugal.

We'll be scouting the Camino Portuguese for our tour which we'll be leading next April.

We'll fly from London to Porto, then pick up a car and drive the route, checking out accommodation, restaurants, and points of interest along the way, right through to Santiago.

Jennifer and I will be researching the historical, religious and spiritual aspects of the route, and the country we'll be walking through next April. We'll be visiting all the major churches and cathedrals along the Camino.

I also want to begin to lock in hotels, rates etc – and find cool places to eat. Already I know a place in Barcelos, famous for its chickens, that has the best grilled Portuguese Chicken in the land.

I'll be blogging daily while I'm away, and of course posting photographs.

In Santiago Jennifer and I will be meeting up with Marie, who posts here under the name of Marie the Basque. She has already signed up for the tour, and is making the trip over to Santiago especially to meet us.

I'm excited to meet her.

I also hope to meet Ivar in Santiago, and Johnnie Walker. If any of you have their email addresses, would you mind sending them to me? At –

billpgsblog@gmail.com

I'll also be on the lookout for a person who can act as a local liaison – that person needs to speak Portuguese, Spanish, English, drive a van, and have the personal skills to handle the needs of fifteen pilgrims.

If any of you know of such a person, again please get in touch.

And if any of you can suggest any particular town or place for us to check out, again please let me know.

After we've done the tour scout, Jennifer and I are flying to Germany for a few days – there are people in Munich I need to meet re film financing.

It will be wonderful to be in Bavaria just before Christmas.

This week will be busy.

Duncan has got two more people for the tour, so we don't have many places left now. Because this is the first time I've led a tour, I want to make sure that Jennifer and I are properly prepared.

I woke up the other morning covered in red blotches.

Itchy.

All over my arms, and some on my lower back too.

They began to form into nasty wheals, and my first thought was that it was an allergic reaction, perhaps to something I'd eaten.

I racked back over what I'd eaten the previous 24hrs. I tried to think of anything I'd eaten that I'd never eaten before. And I remembered the previous evening succumbing to a pre-made supermarket Chicken Kiev.

It was truly disgusting.

And very yummy.

So I immediately put that down as the culprit of my red blotches.

I NEVER eat processed food, but for some reason I'd gone against all my natural instincts and eaten this toxic substance.

The wheals didn't go down, and in fact they got worse. They started to break out into little tiny sores.

And I began to think that if it was an allergic reaction to the supermarket Chicken Kiev, then perhaps I should have shown other symptoms as well – like asthmatic breathing, sweats, etc.

I went online, found myself on WebMD, and saw that I most probably had hives – but I couldn't figure out what might have caused them.

Meanwhile the wheals were getting larger, more itchy, and the sores were starting to seep. Pretty awful.

So I went to the doctor. Seems that I've been going to the doctor a bit lately, after not going for years.

The doctor examined me, asked some questions, and told me it was exema. It met all the symptoms. He asked if I'd been stressed lately, and I recalled the previous few days at the university, dealing with the students. That was stressful.

The doctor said I had to be careful that this didn't become permanent, and prescribed various ointments, creams and pills. I got the scripts filled and it cost me $126. The doctor was $75.

I got scared. Exema. That's serious. And it's not pretty. Was my immune system breaking down? Was there some larger underlying cause? Given the stress I've lived under for so many years, was my body starting to cave in?

I took the pills, put the creams on, it didn't really help.

Still there were questions… Why was it just on my arms and neck and hands? Why not my legs, or body? And why were the wheals so itchy?

I looked at myself in the mirror.

And then I remembered. The evening I'd had that putrid Chicken Kiev, I'd gone outside to take a phone call. It was coming on dusk, I sat on a chair in the garden and I got eaten by little tiny sandflies.

I'd totally forgotten this.

They'd really made a meal of me. I was in a t-shirt and jeans, and the hand that had been holding the phone, that was relatively stationary, had the most bites.

There'd been one other time I'd been bitten by sandflies – when I slept on a beach up in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, hanging out with some aboriginal tribal elders.

I recall having the same kind of reaction. Very itchy large red wheals that developed into sores.

So I didn't have hives. I didn't have exema. My immune system wasn't breaking down. The doctor got it all wrong.

They were bug bites.

When my left foot lost sensitivity at the end of my Camino, I thought I was developing MS. Or it was the onset of early diabetes. I'd gone online. Onto WedMD. Yep. MS. Diabetes.

Why do I always default to the worst possible scenario?

This post is for Rachael – whom some of you know is wont to prick and prickle me from time to time – which I enjoy.

She took me to task for urging my students to not follow rules. She thought I should have said instead: “think outside the box.”

i don’t know much about you Rachael, but you strike me as being someone who follows rules. You probably don’t know much about me, but I don’t. I say: fuck the rules. Always have, and always will –

Implicit in your comment about needing to follow the rules is that the rules are always correct. And that they should be followed without question. Because a rule is a rule, it is by definition something sacrosanct which should be adhered to for the benefit of the individual, and society as a whole.

I don’t buy that.

I question every rule. Because I’m suspicious of most rules. 

I believe most rules are foisted upon us by people with limited imaginations to control and subjugate individual spirit and creative endeavour. This is what Kafka wrote about so powerfully. So too George Orwell.

Read Steve Jobs’ biography – my God, he broke so many damn rules. And the world is a better place for it. Read Edwin Land’s biography – he illegally broke into school science labs at night when he was a kid so he could practice chemistry away from the constraints of his teachers. He subsequently invented polaroid glasses and the polaroid camera.

Jonas Salk broke rules to find the vaccine for polio. De Vinci stole corpses to do autopsies so he could understand human anatomy, breaking every criminal and religious law in the book. Galileo outraged the church at the time by suggesting that the earth revolve around the sun. Some of mankind’s greatest scientific breakthroughs have come from people not following the rules.

Albert Einstein, called “The James Dean of Science,” because of his rule breaking, said: Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

In my field – cinema – following rules leads to mediocrity. The startling works of art come from artists who break the conventional rules. This is what I’m talking about when I speak to students. Scorsese broke so many rules of cinema in his early works – so did Fellini, and Antonioni, and Jean Luc Goddard. The French New Wave revolutionised cinema by not following the conventional rules of the time. They caused a huge fuss.

At the Cannes Film Festival, there’s a division called Directors Fortnight, which each year launches some of the world’s best films. Directors Fortnight was created by enfant terrible film directors in the French cinema who railed against the staid and conventional rules of Official Competition. They believed those rules were too constrictive to the art form.

But you can’t live your life breaking rules in one part of your life and not other parts of your life. You have Woody Allen having an affair with his daughter… good for him is what I say. And you have Steve Jobs perpetually parking in handicapped zones and driving way above the speed limit. It comes with the territory. Genius ain’t nice.

If you say: think outside the box, I would say stomp on the box. You shouldn’t have been in a box in the first place.

I went back to the Neurologist today – a follow up to a previous visit concerning the numbness in my left foot.

The numbness developed during the Camino – and it was worrying. Tests revealed that it was due to an impaction on the S1 nerve from my spine.

Today the neurologist put me through further tests, and the numbness has all but gone. He could not explain why it happened in the first place, and he said there was no medical reason why I could not walk the Portuguese Camino next April – assuming my right knee behaves itself!

But it was good news.

Jennifer and I then found a Columbia hiking store that had everything marked down 50%. Jennifer bought a terrific pair of boots for our scout in Portugal in two weeks, plus a warm rain jacket. I bought two Columbia hiking shirts, the super-duper hi tech sort, for $50 each.

The trip down to Sydney through the fire ravaged Blue Mountains earlier that morning had been uneventful. Lots of fire trucks, some smoking woods here and there, but nothing like the hellfire that the media had been predicting. Thankfully.

In fact, the roads were all but empty. A trip that usually takes us nearly 4hrs took us a little over 3hrs. Everyone was hunkering down, not driving on the roads.

This afternoon I met with the head of the post production house that will be investing in the picSeeder winner – the online film competition Jennifer and I launched earlier this year.

It looks like they'll be investing about half a million dollars into the picture, to have it completed for the Cannes Film Festival next May. I will be an Executive Producer, and my company picSeeder will have a front presentation credit on the movie.

The film is chaming and innocent and an eye-popping piece of cinema. I'm thrilled that this crazy competition that Jen and I launched while I was walking the Camino will now have a major boost – and that the filmmaker after 8 years of toiling on his passion project, will get a huge leg-up into the industry.

While i was at the meeting, Jennifer saw GRAVITY, in 3D on an IMAX screen. Like me, she was blown away. She came out of the movie though with a very interesting take on the underlying themes – female skewed stuff that I had largely missed. Her understanding of story leaves me in the shade often.

Tonight we'll have dinner with all our children. That will be a special time. It normally only happens at Christmas.

Here is a photo of our daughter, Nellie. She has only recently returned from Spain where she lived and worked for about six years. Her book, ONLY IN SPAIN, is being published in North America in spring next year.

It's been revealed that the massive and destructive bush fires that have swept through the mountains behind Sydney this past week were caused by the Army – letting off explosives in a training exercise.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/confirmed-army-exercise-started-blaze-in-blue-mountains-20131023-2w1vt.html

For those who have lost their houses, there will be a lot of anger.

The firefighters who have risked their lives battling these blazes will be angry too.

What about all the livestock that was incinerated?

And what about the taxpayers, who will have to foot the bill for tens of millions of dollars?

I see a class action coming on…

Huffington Post has just published a story on the world's cheapest airline.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/worlds-cheapest-airlines_n_4136651.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

It's Pegasus Airlines –

Fly PGS!

As many of you might know, the bushland behind Sydney is currently ablaze.

We’re being told it’s the worst bushfires in nearly 50 years. Certainly there have been a lot of houses lost, tragically – although thankfully I’m not aware of any loss of life.

Jennifer and I live in Mudgee, about 300kms NW of Sydney. We’re not under threat. We’re about 100kms from the nearest blaze.

The media here are beating up the story. Tomorrow is evidently going to be “catastrophic.” They’re expecting high temperatures, raging winds, and the various fire-fronts to join and create a “mega-fire” which could sweep through Sydney’s outlying suburbs.

I suspect none of that will happen.

As a former journalist, I’m well aware how the media creates stories that are intended to incite fear. The Rural Fire Services and the various emergency services help create this fear, to make us all more compliant.

The trouble is that when you cry wolf, as the media has done on so many other occasions, no-one believes the reports when they are genuine, and when life and property could be in very real danger.

Tonight I was watching the news. They played CCTV footage of some kids stealing donation boxes from stores in the Blue Mountains – the affected area. People have been very generous in donating cash, which they have put into these boxes on the front counters of various stores. These young men stole a box which contained about $300.

Not very charitable.

However the tv news report played up their ethnic background, thus implying it was “not Australian,” and hence inciting racial hatred.

That was also not very charitable.

People have been incredibly caring and compassionate during this difficult period – donating everything from cash to food to bedding to furniture – intended for those who have lost their houses and belongings.

And those fighting the fires are extraordinary people. Many of them are volunteers. They are working incredible hours and putting their lives at risk to save property and keep the fires under control.

Today, many more firefighters came from interstate to tackle what might be an horrific few days coming up. I hope not. Embers from the blazes are known to travel 50km-70km and start spot fires in unaffected areas.

Under the right conditions, these bushfires can travel fast, and be truly lethal.

The day after tomorrow I have to drive down to Sydney, through these bushfire areas, to attend a doctor’s appointment – my neurologist – to check on the numbness in my left foot. This numbness appeared during the Camino, and has stayed with me since, although now it’s fading.

I hope that I can get through on Thursday. I will have to drive through the heart of the main bushfire area. Given the geography of the area, there’s no other way to get to Sydney. It’s the only road.

I’ll take my camera…

Jennifer and I met with Donna and Greg in Brisbane this past week. Two lovely people, very keen to walk their first Camino.

In Donna’s case, she’s been considering family commitments, and she was considering some time way way in the future – but it was clear to me that the Camino bug had bitten her well and truly, and I told her I did not think she would be able to hold out that long!

As we were leaving I asked her if she would write a guest blog. She’s been giving this some thought, and here now is her post. Oh, and I think she’ll be walking the Camino within a year!

Donna’s guest blog

As the regulars on here will know I had the pleasure of meeting Bill and Jennifer last week.  I can assure you all they are even more beautiful in person than they are on the printed screen.  Bill asked me if I would consider writing a guest blog.  Panic immediately set in and I’ve pondered what to write now for almost a week.

I was lucky enough to camp on the beach at Double Island Point, Qld over the weekend.  It’s a beautiful white sandy beach just north of Noosa. You need a 4WD to get there and you literally camp up in the sand dunes.

It makes it very easy put in tent pegs.

When you camp on the beach your arrival and departure times are governed by the tides.  As we had other things to do on Sunday afternoon we had to leave very early on Sunday morning to head back home.

As we left my daughter asked if we could go to the bakery so she could have a meat pie.  It was 5:45 in the morning.  When I didn’t respond immediately she said “It’s tradition Mum – we always have a meat pie when we come up here.”

That got us talking about traditions and we noted that most traditions for us revolve around food:  birthdays, Easter, Christmas.  Thanksgiving in America. Sure there is sometimes gift giving in there but more often than not there is food.  I wondered if I even had a tradition that didn’t involve food.  I thought about this on and off all day.

On Sunday night fellow blogger Greg and I walked up Mt Ngungun. It’s one of the Glasshouse Mountains about an hour north of Brisbane.  It’s a steep and sweaty 20 minute walk to the top but the views are amazing.

We went up on Sunday to watch the sunset and to see the almost full moon rise.  The views from the top are amazing.  It was a very busy night with about 20 people up the top until well into darkness.

It was while we were walking up that I realised I do have a tradition that doesn’t involve food.  And it’s one of my favourite traditions.  After every hike I do I always play k d Lang’s version of Hallelujah.

I play it quite loud in the car and if you are in my car you must adhere to two rules – you can sing along but you must not speak until the song is over.  I’ve been doing this for a number of years now and my walks don’t feel complete unless I do this.

What are the Camino traditions? Leaving a stone at the Cruce de Ferro and placing your hand on the pillar in the cathedral in Santiago are two I know of.  Are there others?

Do you have any walking/hiking traditions?  Or any other traditions that don’t involve food?

You’d think I would have learned a thing or two from my Camino…

Traveling back by car from the week’s work up in Queensland, I wanted to stay at Gunnedah – principally because I wanted to stay in the Koala Capital of the World.

I don’t like koalas – every time I’ve tried to cuddle one I’ve come away requiring first aid.

That’s not the point though in deciding to stay in Gunnedah. There’s something wonderful about the extravagance of the claim – the Koala Capital of the World – that appealed to me. The fact that there was not one koala to be seen, other than on bullet riddled road signs, only made the trip more memorable.That, and the Spanish “parmi,” which was part chicken schnitzel, part pizza, part decaying vegetable matter purporting to be salad.

The previous night, I’d gone online to book in Gunnedah. There was only one motel available, and it was $130 a night. Pretty damn stiff, I thought, for a country motel, even if it was in the Koala Capital of the World.

I doubted there was a Koala convention on in town, or that it was mating season for koalas, in which case Gunnedah would most probably be full of gawky onlookers wanting to take photos of koalas copulating. I’m sure that if you video-ed two koalas copulating, particularly in the fork of a gum tree, and you put it up on YouTube, you would go viral.

Nope. No mating season. No bonking koalas. It was just a regular Sunday night, and a standard double room would cost $130. So, I booked, somewhat regretfully.

We drove in and the motel, despite saying that it was ideally located, was actually about fifteen minutes walk into town. Twenty minutes if you’re a pilgrim and you’ve got a crook knee. It was ideally situated to Deepka’s Indian Restaurant next door, and Central Chinese  next door to that. It seemed we were in Gunnedah’s Restaurant Row.

Our motel room was cramped and right beside the highway. Eighteen wheelers rumbled past, trembling my cheeks. Both sets. The advertised flat-screen tv was on a drooping tilt, as though it had just had a stroke. The airconditioner, when you turned it on, sounded llke a Spitfire just about to take off from an aircraft carrier.

Did I say the room was cramped? Double bed, not Queen sized, but still  big enough to take up 85% of the floor area. The other 15% was not large enough to do a Downward Dog.

The bathroom: I’ve seen better bathrooms in municipal albergues where if you donated €5 for the night, you’d think you were being generous.

All this for the grand sum of $130.

Jennifer and I took a walk down towards the town. As we walked, I counted half a dozen other motels, all closer into the centre of the town, all with Vacancy signs out front. Why hadn’t they been on Booking.com and the other websites I checked?  I know why. They charge too much in commission.

We found a pub and had our celebrated Spanish parmi, which lifted our spirits but lowered our stomachs. Then we walked back. I decided I would ask at one of the other motels what their prices were.

I spoke to Evan, who ran the Billabong Motel. Evan said his rooms were $99 a night. And he told us proudly that he had the cleanest rooms in Gunnedah. This presumably to clean out koala poo each morning.

We chatted to Evan, and it turned out he was a serious traveler himself. He said he never minded where he slept. It was only a bed. He always chose the cheapest place. Hostels and YMCAs. More money to spend on other things, like meals and transport, he said. And most times the cheapest places gave you the best experiences.

The cheapest places give you the best experiences. So true.

We looked at the Courthouse Hotel, which is where we had our celebrated Spanish Parmi. They had rooms. $45 a night, bathroom down the hall. That’s where we should have stayed. That would have been an experience.

Driving back to Mudgee, we saw cattle on “the long paddock.” The long paddock is a bushie term for the grass beside the road. Evidently the stockmen are moving the cattle some two and a half thousand kilometres from Queensland down to Victoria, to richer pastures. There were about 1200 cattle in 4 separate mobs.

Now back in Mudgee – I reflect on the lessons learned. Don’t be afraid to just rock up to a town and wing it. I did that all the time on my Camino. I let my PGS guide me. There will always be a room. There will always be a bed.

Even in the Koala Capital of the World…