I'm not really here, I'm somewhere posh!

Well, who'd have thought it! From time to time I've pottered around on a website for older travellers - the forum is fun and they have useful info about places to go and how to get there. Go and have a look here - and then come back, because I need to explain why I'm lounging in luxury.

As you may have seen, they have competitions and winners go off to wherever, and write a review for the website when they get back. And I've won a night in a luxury hotel near Bath - which is where I am now. I spent Sunday pottering about the city, pretending to be Jane Austen, that sort of thing. (The best summer entertainment is in Victoria Park, watching anyone who hasn't met a deckchair before trying to put it up - there's not so many tourist in the park in October!)

I'll tell you about the hotel in due course, but must write the review for Silver Travellers first - that's part of the deal. Besides, I'm writing this before I go - so this is an anticipatory post.

And it feels strange, heading for luxury. It'll take my suitcase, not a rucksack. I'll need respectable clothes for dinner (yes, I do have some, not eaten by moths). The bathroom will be full of smelly goodies. There will be fluffy white bath robes and slippers. Tea will come in proper cups and saucers. There are views from all rooms across green fields and trees. There is a swimming pool, and sauna. And tennis courts and a golf range.

It will be ... different. I'm used to making myself at home in places that are, well, rough and ready (the tiny room with no windows in Kuala Lumpur probably the worst), and have had to make friends with unlikely visitors (my rat in Laos). I don't look for dirt behind the toilet. If I'm clean enough and safe, that's fine with me. The point is the travelling, and the people I meet, rather than where I lay my head.

So, this time, will I lie back on feather pillows and feel at home? Will I fill the bath with bubbles? Will I sit in the sauna, swim in the pool? Of course I will - and what wonderful fun it will be!! But will I know myself?