If you thought you were seeing a bunch of cardinals walking about town and across the Island you were wrong.

They were the Red Hat Ladies, a group that promotes having fun for women over 55.

The women were donned in their red hats and purple gloves as they attended one event after the other. caught up with them at Mrs. Tea?s Victorian Tea Room, on Middle Road, Southampton.

Group leader Sally Collura, a frequent visitor to the Island, decided that she would bring her Red Hat ladies, who hail from throughout New England and beyond, to Bermuda for a visit.

?I put this cruise together about a year ago and I through it out to the ladies in Watch City Society and from the Waltham, Massachusetts, areas, which is about ten miles west of Boston,? she said. ?I had formed my group about a year-and-a-half ago with 43 women and now we are up to 120 members. I thought wouldn?t it be neat to go to my favourite place and doing my favourite thing, cruising.

?I know a lot of the ladies, sometimes won?t fly ? so I thought this would sort of do it for everyone. To have a leisurely day and a half out and on ship and we had done some formal photos on formal night, which included Thomas MacDonald from the Bermuda Department of Tourism, in Boston.?

Ms Collura said Mr. MacDonald was instrumental in organising the entire event.

?He was so helpful at getting everything together for us,? she said. ?He offered information, he gave us little promotional pens and packets of sand. When I had started to put it together I got the word out to others in the area and I thought wouldn?t it be fun if members of other chapters would go.

?I got on the Internet and I spoke with Princess Jackie, who is also in my chapter, and she went to the Red Hat Society website and let everyone know about the cruise.

?Then I started getting e-mails throughout New England and I said anyone can come and the more people that I take to Bermuda and show them this Island and had they never been here before all the better and it would make a great vacation.

?So little by little there were people booking reservations on the cruise and there was a cruise specialist in Medford, Mass. and Bill Henderson, and he gave us some great prices.?

The entire Red Hat Society was born out of a poem entitled Warnings, by English poet Jenny Jones.

She said it says: ?When I grow old I shall wear purple, with a red hat and gloves...? And it talks about how we have responsibilities through life and we sometimes lose sight of how important we are.

?And lots of women who have already paid their dues to family and job and those sorts of things are now having lots of fun being members of the Red Hat Society.

?When I was on the website I looked up to see if there was a Society in Bermuda, because I thought wouldn?t it be fun if we could come down and meet up with the ladies on the Island, but there was none.

?There is now, a small group of six, so what I did was to register Bermuda Red Hat Society so I?m going to make a presentation today to Penny Terceira (owner of Mrs. Teas Victorian Tea Rooms).

?So I have all of the membership cards to give her. I don?t know when the other chapter began, but when I looked on line I didn?t see anything listed for Bermuda.?

Ms Collura said the organisation was started in the mid-to-late 90s by a woman in California.

?It was her friend?s fiftieth birthday and she had read to poem by Jenny Jones and she thought what a great thing it would be to give her friend a red hat,? she said, ?And her friend thought it was a great thing so she gave her friend a red hat and it is now a huge enterprise now.

?They have their own online store and travel agency that organises Red Hat trips and a semi-annual convention.

?They are planning one for 2005 in Las Vegas. They have done a cruise out of New Orleans to the Western Caribbean.

?So there are activities both nationally and internationally.

?It is multifaceted between the merchandising and the travel.

?And we are all out on a treasure hunt to see if we can find something purple. When we get together for our meetings we are all telling where we found our latest purple treasure.?

Ms Collura said each Chapter is run by its own Queen and they all do different things for fun.

?We call the Red Hat Society a disorganisation and a lot of the Chapters meet on a regular basis for tea or for lunch,? she said.

?There a Chapters that are wives of masons, there are some that only have four to six people and then there are those like mine that have 100 people-plus.

?We are about 120 and we have a waiting list and the only reason there is a waiting list because there is a lot to manage.?

She said there are in the vicinity of 20,000 to 30,3000 Red Hat Chapters throughout the world.

?They are in so many different countries and they have their own rules,? she said, ?Their own identity and they get together for different things and now there are probably close to two million official members of the Red Hat Society.?

She said she met a woman from Trinidad and there were 15 members there.

?I spoke with her and she is going to come up to the Waltham area and we are going to meet with her,? she said, ?I also spoke to a member from Maryland who was coming up on business and she wanted to stop in. And if you go half way around the world or to another State you can meet a Red Hat lady.

?Since we have been on the Island people come up to us and have said that they know who we are and that we are the Red Hat ladies. It is amazing that even men know.?

She said some of the things that her Chapter do together can range from movies afternoons were we would have a movie and then go to lunch, to a tour of museums.

?We have gone a Boston Dock Tour where they have those amphibious vehicles and they go into the Charles River,? said Mrs. Collura.

?We?ve been on wine tasting out in the Berkshires and that was lovely. On the way out we visited the country store and had lunch there and returned home.

?So we have a blast. Some have book clubs, game nights, and once we had a pyjamas breakfast and there were probably 40 of us that showed up in our fluffy slippers.

?So that is what we do.?

She said they were at Mrs. Tea?s Tea Room to present Mrs. Terceira with the official membership.

?We hope that maybe people would come down and gather at her tea rooms,? she said.

?Women can do good things together. It has just been a very positive and fun thing to do. The girls absolutely have had a wonderful time here.

?The comments have been how friendly the people are; how accommodating everybody has been; and how beautiful the Island is.

?I wouldn?t be surprised if they return next year or the year after.? Mrs. Collura added that the organisation also serves as a diversion for many of its members because many have served on charities and boards.

?I am a Waltham City Councillor and I hold a full-time job,? she said, ?I am on a couple of boards myself and I wanted to gather a group of ladies together to have that outlet and the camaraderie to say, ?lets just go out with the girls?.

?There is another facet and it was started as a social group, we have done charity work to and we have raised over $1,600 for cancer and we also visit our big sisters in nursing homes.

?We went on Mother?s Day and we had high tea, we bought the tea, the cups, the sandwiches and desert. We mingled and talked with them, taking group photographs and you could tell by the smiles on their faces when we left and the impression was when were we coming back.

?So although we are not a charitable organisation we do charity work.

?It is all about what makes you happy.?