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Uggh. Everything was wet this morning: the tents, sleeping bags, bike seats, shoes. Sand covered, too. My least favorite way to start the day. We got up early, but not early enough for the 6:30 AM sailing. We packed up and went to Pronto Creative Foods, a bistro we had seen last night and had coffee and an egg/spinach/feta wrap. Then it was back to the ferry dock to catch the 7:30. Apparently, it’s quite the commuter route from Ettalong as folks leave their cars in the wharf parking lot and pick them up to finish their commute.
Ettalong was our friend Stephen’s hometown, so we stopped again for some pics to send to him, and to get more coffee at the very nice Coast 175 bistro. We also got a chance to boost our phones’ charges a bit as they were almost depleted as were our backup packs. Our destination today is Newcastle and we have Warmshowers hosts El & Sam there. Still a lot of coastal climbing to do, though there were really nice flat sections along the Pacific Highway which we were on for much of the day. The day was kind of gray and humid, but at least there wasn’t any more rain.
At one section though, the GPS had us get off of the highway and head through a number of small “towns.” “Towns” in the sense that they were geographic entities, but mostly suburban houses and no services to speak of. Also very hilly. If we’d have stuck to the highway, it would have be a lot quicker than the slow progress we made up and down — though never down far enough to get to the bay side beaches where the town centers supposedly were. We were expecting a stop at mile 39, but didn’t get one until we got to Swansea at mile 46 (and another 600 ft of ups and downs!). We had a couple beers at the Swansea Hotel and got another round of charging in — enough to get us to Newcastle, we hoped.
Once the devices were close to topped off, we grabbed some sandwich fixin’s at the Coles grocery store, and stopped in McDonalds for a couple of ice cream cones and a little wi-fi before we got back on the road.
The rest of the trip to Newcastle was great as we got on the Fernleigh Awabakal Shared Track rail trail shortly after Swansea that took us almost right to our hosts’ house. We were a bit early so we headed for The Exchange Hotel for happies and a nice chat with a psychologist having his post-work-day relaxer.
Sufficiently happy, we headed to El’s & Sam’s and were greeted by El and their son Darcy who showed us where to put our bikes. After unloading, we took showers and put most of our clothes in the wash. I unloaded the tent and sleeping bags and hung them on the veranda where they were soon joined by the rest of our clothes.
We had a delicious and filing dinner with El and their daughter Tess, freshly home from school and a Roller Derby session. We had plenty of questions about that and she completely charmed us with her answers about that and school and her plans for Uni. Darcy had gone out with friends. Sam had post-teaching coaching to do and got home to join us for dinner and some more wine. Lovely couple and lovely kids and so much more warm and cozy than the park last night.
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