Another day trip, this time in the opposite direction from Bath. Canterbury has a well enough preserved medieval town centre to have been granted UNESCO status. With its famous big cathedral in the centre, it's the seat of the head of the Church of England and all the history that goes with it. On the day we visited the weather was great - one of those rare English summer days this year with sunshine and warmth at the same time. The train journey down was past fields of wheat ready to harvest and orchards of fruit I couldn't quite make out through the scratched graffiti on the window. It was nice wandering the tiny medieval streets that you'd normally expect to find somewhere famous tourist destinations in France or Germany. Unfortunately even here you can't escape the usual chains of restaurants and coffee shops, but I was still taken aback by the history of Nero coffee chain..

I was ready to write how the doting and obsessing on Oprah Winfrey's current trip to Australia is so embarassing, bordering on the pathetic. But perhaps if she had decided to go to Ireland instead (bringing with her the studio audience) I can't really say that the Irish tourist industry wouldn't do the same thing. And already all the money the government here has spent on the whole exercise has already been recouped in advertising exposure in America and everywhere else where Oprah is a star. But it's amazing the extent to which every last thing she's done and visited here so far has been headline news, wiping this weeks Wikileaks and Julian Assange news off the front pages of some newspapers. Flagpoles that usually hang banners for arts festivals or other events now have big flags with Oprah on them instead.