It has not been an unusually hot summer, whilst we have had the occasional daytime temperature exceeding 41°, certainly there have not been runs of several days as we did last year. My Saturday morning summer routine is to join the hundreds of cyclists as they pant and push their way up the old Norton Summit Road. This week on the way down we came across this remarkable sight. A young male koala sitting in the middle of the road

It did not even attempt to run away but was obviously severely dehydrated and indeed managed to consume several drinks bottles from the cyclists as they came down and stopped. I suspect the poor thing was sick in some way. I wondered whether koalas could suffer from diabetes? Anyway after consuming at least 10 or 12 L of water it waddled back into the hills and climbed the nearest gumtree! I have never seen this before and it almost appeared that the Koala knew exactly where the water was and would reach up for the drink containers on the bike.

One of the cyclists phoned the animal rescue unit as we were all of the opinion that it was not well! Eventually we all cycled back down and I headed off to the Norwood swimming pool to cool down before of course heading off to the mandatory coffee on the Parade.

Within the next three weeks I’m heading off to a couple of medical conferences the first in Budapest, “Controversies in Neurology”. Then I shall journey to the northern part of England and Scotland and the Lakes district’s where my cousin lives with his wife and spend a week with them. He has organised a bicycle for me! Then I will head down to London for another conference on epilepsy before returning home.

I have already planned a month off in September, I will head to Istanbul for a week then I am rather excited about the possibility of a swimming trek for eight days between the various Greek islands before heading down to the southern part of Italy and the town of LECCE about which I have become rather fascinated. and yes you have read correctly it will be a swimming trek and to confirm this a photo of the various swims around the Greek isles appears below. The yellow lines mark each individual swimming trek of about three or 4 km and we do TWO each day.

And as for Lecce, I was knew I had to visit when I watched a great Italian Movie as in  this link

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2691793920/tt1405810?ref_=ttmd_md_pv#

So.. any of my readers are keen to join me? Start your swim training and cycling today!