It’s taken a while to arrive in the UK market, but it will be in UK bookshops this week. The publisher is Crimson and it retails for £9.99. Once While Travelling is a combination of autobiography, travel story and business book.

It kicks off with how Maureen and I met, follows our journeys over the year and looks at the growth and changes Lonely Planet has gone through. How did we manage to live together, travel together, grow a business together and even include two children in the picture? It’s all here. The last chapter covers Lonely Planet’s new incarnation with BBC-Worldwide. The assorted editions of The Lonely Planet story even includes a Chinese edition!

Unfortunately the launch event at Stanfords Bookshop in London has had to be cancelled. Hopefully we’ll be able to reschedule it for a later date in September.

Sometimes missing your flight (or more accurately having Virgin Blue Airlines cancel it) can lead to an interesting change of plans. Last month I was talking about adventure travel at the Byron Bay Writers Festival first thing in the morning and then, in late afternoon, revealing some of my favourite souvenirs at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney. No problem, after my morning talk I’d take the bus to Coolangatta Airport on the Gold Coast (70km, a bit over an hour) and fly down to Sydney (800km, another hour).

Then Virgin Blue cancelled my flight. So click here to find what happened next ...

Wednesday 10 September – 730 pm – The British edition of The Lonely Planet Story was due to be launched at Stanford Bookshop at Long Acre, Covent Garden in London but unfortunately I can't make it. If we manage to reschedule it I'll post the information as soon as possible.

Saturday 13 September – TNT Winter Travel Show – I was also supposed to be speaking at this travel show at the Royal Horticultural Halls & Conference Centre at Westminster in London. Unfortunately I can't make this one either.

Go anyway, it should be a great show!

29 Monday 29 September to Thursday 2 October – The Gros Morne International Summit on Sustainable Tourism will take place at Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, Canada and I’ll be there.

Tuesday 14 to Sunday 19 October – Maureen and I will be in Bali for the Ubud Writers Festival along with a stellar cast of international writers. We went to the very first Ubud Writers Festival in 2004 and it's developed into a much loved event in the subsequent years.

with Bill Dalton, author of Indonesia Handbook, and LP author Ryan Ver Berkmoes in Ubud in 2004.

The Georgian town of Gori, not far west of the capital Tbilisi, has been heavily in the news these last few days after the Russian attacks on the breakaway province of South Ossetia also targeted Gori. I spent a day in Gori last September. The town’s grey Soviet-era apartments are overlooked by an ancient fortress, but Gori’s big attraction is ‘Georgian Joe.’

Yes Gori is Joseph Stalin’s birthplace.

The Georgians are a little ambivalent about their most famous son, but you can’t miss him. A statue of the Soviet leader tops a column in Stalin Square from where Stalin Ave leads to the Stalin Museum. There you can look around Joe’s childhood home, enshrined in what looks like a temple, inspect Stalin’s personal railway carriage and learn all about his life and times in the museum. OK purges, forced collectivisation, Siberian gulags, mass starvation and the other bad stuff doesn’t feature, but the good stuff is all here.

click here for more photos of Gori.

or here for Lonely Planet's Georgia, Armenia & Azerbaijain guidebook

Last month Maureen and I travelled up to Liverpool (European Capital of Culture for 2008) for a little culture. We stayed at the Hard Day’s Night Hotel, visited the Beatles Story Museum, took the National Trust tour to John Lennon’s and Paul McCartney’s childhood homes and caught the Klimt exhibition at the Tate Liverpool. Plus we had a look around the excellent Merseyside Maritime Museum. The Titanic and the Lusitania were both Liverpool registered but so was the Empress of Ireland which went down two years after the Titanic and resulted in more passenger deaths (840) than the Titanic (817) or the Lusitania     (791).

click here for the full story