24 more sites of “outstanding universal value” have been designated world heritage sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). These include the ancient Iraqi city of Ashur and Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, where towering statues of Buddha (see picture right) were destroyed by the former Taleban regime.

The first eight of the new UNESCO heritage sites are as follows:

· Purnululu National Park, Australia: Located in the state of Western Australia, it covers an expanse of nearly 250,000 hectares. The park's Bungle Bungle Range contains sandstone eroded into the shape of beehives over 20 million years.

· Three parallel rivers of Yunnan protected areas, China: A 1.7 million hectare site in Yunnan province, containing parts of three of the great rivers of Asia: the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween. The rivers run parallel through steep gorges, from 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) to 6,000 metres high.

· Monte San Giorgio, Switzerland: A wooded mountain shaped like a pyramid. Contains some of the best fossil records of marine life from about 250 million years ago.

· Uvs Nuur Basin, Russian Federation/Mongolia: About a million hectares. Contains a rich diversity of birds and is home to the gerbil, jerboas, the marbled polecat, snow leopard, mountain sheep and the Asiatic Ibex.

· Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park, Vietnam: A dramatic, forested highland which includes underground caves and rivers and is mainly covered by tropical rainforest.

· Bamiyan Valley, Afghanistan: Previously home to two colossal statues of Buddha, which were blown up by the Taleban in February 2001, provoking worldwide condemnation. UNESCO says the choice “symbolises the hope of the international community that extreme acts of intolerance, such as the deliberate destruction of the Buddhas, are never repeated again”.

· Quebrada de Humahuaca, Argentina: A major trade route over the past 10,000 years. Shows traces of the Inca Empire (15th to 16th Century) and of the fight for independence in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

· Historic Quarter of the Seaport City of Valparaiso, Chile: An interesting example of late 19th Century urban and architectural development in Latin America.

Source: BBC News

Gary, from the US is planning to cycle 1,500 miles around the UK. He started his journey on the 16^th of May 2003. Since that date he has travelled over 1,100 miles on a recumbent bike. At the time of writing, he has approximately 400 mile to go to complete the trip. Gary says: “The trip has been a real adventure. It's been absolutely fantastic!”

I had an interesting day today. I left Banff this morning around 9 am, and was heading for Elgin. It was raining, but not hard. Fifteen miles into my ride my rear tyre went flat. It was a good spot on the side of the road and the rain had stopped. I managed to get a new tube installed, but, evidently, I damaged the tube and the tyre immediately went flat – again. Well, I was on the edge of a village so I pushed the bike to town for help. There wasn't a bike shop or garage in town. The first person I met was a chap taking pictures of the bay. We started driving around in his car looking for help.

We came up to some workers working on the water mains. The boss wound up taking me to the next town five miles up the road to a bike shop. He wouldn’t hear of me compensating him for his troubles. He said he needed to do his part in increasing tourism. Luckily the bike shop was open. They are closed on Wednesday's. The fellow that owns the bike shop had his wife make me up a cup of tea. She also invited me in her home so that I could clean the grease off my hands. By this time it's three o'clock in the afternoon, so I decided to call it a day, and found a lovely four star B&B. People here are so friendly and generous here it's unbelievable.

One thing I've learned, it doesn't take much to survive. I'm on a seven week trip with roughly two of everything. I have to keep clothes in three groups – clean, only used one or two days, and definitely need to be washed. If I can't find anybody to wash them or too embarrassed to ask, I wash out a set in the sink with hand soap and hope they dry by morning. More than once, I had to put on wet clothes. I'm sure this isn't the kind of news you were waiting to hear, but that's the reality of the trip.

I've tried almost everything on the menu, but one of the things I haven't tried is black pudding. They tell me it's very good, but someone said it's fried pigs’ blood. I haven't been able to bring myself to trying it. Maybe it's something I'll never have the opportunity of experiencing.

I'm still slugging along. Today I was feeling so smug. I was ready to bestow expert map reader after my name till this afternoon. There were conflicting signals on the trail and I went left instead of right. The outcome was too bizarre to go into much detail. The upshot was I was lost and in the middle of a field that a farmer was cutting hay. The hill was steep and slippery. When I tried to apply the brakes, my feet snagged the cut grass and I was catapulted headfirst. Luckily, I had a soft landing. Well, I finally made it to my destination of Falkland at 6 pm. It's a real small town with a castle and huge cathedral. Yesterday I was talking to the sheep all day.

I was in Inverness. I don't know how everybody keeps putting up with me. I'm constantly asking for directions to somewhere- bike shop, streets, B&Bs', you name it. Everybody is so patient and willing to help in any way they can. I'm not shy when it comes to asking for directions. When you're on a bike you can kill a half hour real quickly going in circles. I met a couple of hikers around my age (nearing retirement) over breakfast at the last b&b I stayed at in Buckie called the Rosemount who are from the Orkney Islands. They looked at my map and it so happens I'll be passing within a half mile of their house. They asked me to stop by for a cup of tea. What a small world!

When I was eating dinner last night I noticed on the menu they were featuring lamb imported from New Zealand. Now, of all the things the Scotts need to import you would think the last thing would be sheep. Somebody said in a grocery store a couple of days ago, “You've seen more of the UK in the last four weeks than I've seen in my whole life”. I suspect that's true!

European no-frills airline Ryanair says it is to stop accepting American Express charge cards. They say Amex makes higher charges than most other companies and that they will refuse to take bookings on the cards from the end of June 2003. Ryanair emphasized that it would continue to accept other credit cards.

Ryanair reported a big rise in net profits in its last financial year. Net profits of EUR239.4 million (USD$281.4 million) were 59 percent up on the previous year and the carrier says it expects to see passenger numbers in 2003/04 to soar to 24 million from the present 15.7 million. They are predicting that they will overtake both British Airways and Germany's Lufthansa within three years.

And finally here is a very sad website, for all those who would like to “virtually” fly a Ryanair plane. http://members.lycos.co.uk/virtualryanair/AboutVirtualRyanair.htm

Facts about the Oceans and Seas of the world

Still in Argentina, after El Chalten, we journeyed on to another place called El Calafate where again we spent three nights and it was here that we saw our most spectacular glacier ever, the Perito Moreno glacier which is enormous, rising many metres in the air and looking like a massive landlocked iceberg but much more spectacular than any other iceberg.

We took a trip on a catamaran to go right up to the face of the glacier and the catamaran stayed an hour, just circling so that we saw the glacier from every angle and were able to photograph it ad infinitum. Some people used up an entire film or more just on this incredible natural phenomenon, as following the boat trip we were taken to a viewpoint on land where we could carry on gazing at the glacier from different levels. Many of our group refused to leave at the stated time as they were convinced they were going to see great chunks of ice break off. One chunk did fall off, which I didn’t see.

Then we moved on from El Calafate to the Torres El Paine National Park in Chile. Judith and I weren’t too impressed with the actual walks we went on there as they just did not match up to the 12 hour one we had done before and the glaciers we had seen then, as the weather was not good in the park, very misty and although we managed the walk (8 hours again but we did it in 7 hours), we considered it mediocre, and a lot of hard work climbing for very little reward. However, the camp site where we stayed, on Lake Pehoe was superb with the most magnificent view of the mountains with their snowcaps and this marvelous lake beneath them.

The actual facilities at the camp were atrocious, as the camp site was large and well used by an incredible number of people but there were only two loos for the women with one sink to wash at, and similar for the men, and only four communal showers in a different location which only produced out hot water from 8 to 11 in the morning and from 1900 to 2200 in the evening and very often we had to leave to go on our excursions before the showers were hot in the mornings and often arrived back too late to take advantage of the evening sessions!

The only good aspect of the camp was the tiny shop which was hardly bigger than a garden shed but sold the most amazing range of wines, beers, biscuits, snacks, cigarettes etc to suit just about every taste and did not rip us off as other places appeared to be doing. While there, we also went on a bus ride to a glacier (yes, this particular area both on the Argentine side and the Chile side is renowned for its glaciers) and although we could only see the end of the glacier at a distance we were able to walk around a beautiful lake with the most fantastically shaped and coloured blue icebergs which obviously had broken away from the glacier at some point. And this little place in the middle of nowhere had the most beautiful toilets we had seen in a long time as it had obviously just been built, was brand spanking new and had toilet paper as well as soap and hand driers and doors that actually locked and believe me that really is luxury in the public loos here!

And now I am in Ushaia, the city at the end of the world, on the little island at the base of South America called Tierra del Fuego and we discovered, Judith and I, with a visit to the little well run and very informative museum here that it was so called because when the first white men arrived they saw all these fires burning on the hills that the natives had lit, but whether this was to welcome or frighten away the intruders or just to keep the natives warm, is not known!!

It is extremely cold here all year round and 15 degrees is considered hot! The sun does shine but there is always a cold wind blowing and that gets worse in winter and spring apparently! We took a boat trip up the beagle channel yesterday and saw a colony of cormorants and a colony of sea lions and circled the lighthouse at the end of the world and yes, we took dozens of superfluous shots of everything in sight! But the boat was also a luxury as it was the first boat trip we had been on which actually served food on board and hot drinks and alcoholic drinks and for the men provided these two very attractive young ladies to serve it! And these young ladies would dress up in their navy blue topcoats with brass buttons to come out on deck and tell us all about the sights and scenes we were seeing, and informed the more ignorant of us that no, that wasn’t a colony of penguins we were viewing but cormorants! (They looked very similar with black backs and white chests and from a distance and even close to looked very penguin like).

Next month: en route to Buenos Aires and real penguins.

If you’d like to contact Iris, whether to wish her luck with her trip or to ask questions about her itinerary and places visited, I am sure she would like to hear from you. She can be contacted on: irisej2002@yahoo.co.uk