Me and my wee sis are just back from Australia. We were in Brisbane for our mate Elaine’s wedding – which was brilliant. We turned the trip into a massive holiday, so I managed to get a bit of surfing done in between bridesmaid duties! We started off in Tokyo then New Zealand, Australia and finally Hong Kong.

Tokyo was amazing – everything is so beautifully designed. From manhole covers to the toilets – they even have sound effects. We packed in all the must-do tourist stuff, hanging out with the crazy kids in Harajuku and even made it to a Japanese bathing house. The bathing house was sold to us as a kind of waterpark so we packed our swimmers – however when we got there we began to realise we didn’t need any kind of clothing at all!!!

The next stop on our trip was NZ – where you definitely need loads of clothes – woolly jumpers and thermals in particular. The first chance I got to get in the sea was in Raglan in the north island.

New Zealand is a pretty wild and rugged place and at this time of year the water is really cold. As I’m used to freezing my arse off in Scotland I thought odds on NZ would be a bit warmer, I was wrong – the water was totally freezing and the baggy wetsuit I’d rented didn’t help, I might as well have been naked. However us Scottish girls are made of hardy stuff – so after an hour and a half of being thrown around by the NZ waves I was warm enough to feel like I deserved a good lunch. Next surf stop Noosa – bring on the heat!!!