Lonely Planet – the global giant whose guidebooks serve the dual purpose of inspiring readers while simultaneously making them feel terribly timid because they’ve never backpacked through Belarus – has released Everyday Adventures: 50 new ways to experience your hometown.

The book, from what Parade can work out, contains ideas for rediscovering a familiar place – from setting yourself a challenge to letting a child be your tour guide for the day.

It got Parade thinking about all the bits of Bathurst and surrounds that he either hasn’t visited in a long time or has never visited at all (Parade is looking at you, National Motor Racing Museum at Mount Panorama).

How many of Parade’s readers can say they’ve walked through the door of all of the following: Abercrombie House, Bathurst District Historical Museum, Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum, Chifley Home and Miss Traill’s House and Garden?

(And that’s just a selection of what we’ve got to see in town.)

Parade wants to give readers a challenge: before winter’s finished, choose a weekend and spend an hour or two acting like a tourist in your own city.

And if you don’t have an hour or two, make it 15 minutes. If you haven’t driven that way for a long time, the view of the city lights at night from upper Bentinck Street, next to St Stanislaus’ College, might really surprise you.

PARADE doesn’t know if he’s just got a good batch or whether this is the way it normally works, but he’s still plucking carrots from his summer vegie garden to have with his dinner each week.

Parade assumes the carrots aren’t growing, but neither have they turned up their toes amid the -7 mornings and the days that have struggled to get past 10 degrees. If anything, the cold seems to have made them even more delicious.

By the time Parade’s finished eating them all, it will be time to plant again.