Thursday, July 31, 2014

Road Trip to Byron

We are on our way to the Byron Bay Writers Festival and decide to break journey in Coffs Harbour.  We pull in to Lorraine’s house and feel immediately at home when she opens the door and warmly welcomes us.  She has captioned her listing old fashioned comfort and we loved the charm and character of her beautiful home.  We are shown to the back where there is separate accommodation   In addition to the bedroom with ensuite, there is a large lounge room and sunny deck – both great spaces to relax in.
for us in what is very much a self-contained section of her house.

We connected right away with Lorraine and soon we were sitting in the front room exchanging stories over wine and canapés.  Lorraine has also travelled a lot especially as a young girl and she was entertaining us with her stories of travel and living in India for a year.  We had similar stories to tell and she was really interested to hear that we were both soon to be launching our books.  Steve had just got his books from the printers and once Lorraine saw the book she decided to purchase it right away and asks me to ship her a couple of my books as well when they were printed. 

It was a wonderful night and we knew we had made another friend who would stay in our lives for a lot longer than our one night in her AIRBNB.  I absolutely love this concept and we rarely stay at guesthouses anymore.  Lorraine was incredibly generous and we had enough food in the fridge to keep us well fed for both dinner and breakfast the next day.  We spent more time together in the morning.  The deck is bathed in sunlight in the morning and Lorraine makes us some tea and we relax over crumpets and fruit and green tea, feeling loath to leave too early. 

Before we leave, Lorraine makes a call to a bookstore in Bellingen and we detour to meet John at Alternatives bookstore who purchases 5 copies of Steve’s book and asks me to send him 5 copies of mine as well.  It is a great start to our trip to the Writers Festival and a great omen for this shared creative journey.   I wonder where it will all lead…