Summer and Schoolies

December 1st has arrived, heralding the first day of summer and the temperatures reacted accordingly. The previous week’s weather had been a bit unsettled, so it was lovely to feel the heat again!

On Sunday, Clive and I had joined our cycling group on a breakfast ride from Mona Vale (a suburb about 20 minutes’ drive north from us) to Whale Beach, further up the peninsula. The weather was perfect, sunny but not too hot, with sea breezes to cool our moist brows!

I had been worried about joining this ride, as the coastal roads are pretty hilly, but Wendy had assured me that I could cope, and I thought Clive and I could always just split from the group if necessary. Sure enough, from the moment we left the car park, up reared the hills! Probably not very noticeable by car, but a different kettle of fish by bike!

After about an hour and a half we reached Whale Beach, and very beautiful it looked too. A few of us carried on to a viewpoint along the narrow residential road, and I was so busy chatting to Clive behind me that I failed to notice a parked ute, and proceeded to crash into it. Luckily, we were cycling uphill and slowly, so the only damage done was to my middle finger and my pride!

Breakfast was in an organic cafe serving delicious food. It felt like we’d been up for hours, but it was still only 9:30am. We were all a little sluggish when we set off for home, and the fact that the first road was a long, slow, uphill drag didn’t help. I gave up and pushed part-way up the hill, at the same speed as those cycling. Don’t know who used most energy there!

Part of the ride had to be along the main road between Newport and Bilgola called the ‘Bilgola Bends’. It’s a winding, coast-hugging stretch of single carriageway, with fantastic views of the sea. Not the most relaxing part of the ride, and we just pushed on as fast as possible hoping the drivers were looking at the road and not the views.

It was good to get home at lunchtime and still have most of the day ahead of us. Laura was packing her case ready to go to the Gold Coast for her ‘Schoolies’ week. The majority of school-leavers go here each year to take over the hotels, 'chill' and have a good time before becoming ‘serious adults’. It’s a week of endless partying, drinking and staying up until dawn. Poor things.

We could easily worry about her, but there’s not much we can do, so we just filled her head with endless snippets of advice and took her and a friend to the airport to meet some others. Of course, Laura had to have the overweight case, so the poor girl had to open it in front of everyone at check-in and transfer some things (mainly bottles) into her friends’ cases. Can’t really see the logic in that, but never mind, they managed to avoid being off-loaded and the next we heard from her, she was having a great time and turning her body clock on it’s head. She’ll be good company when she gets home!

Laura finishes school for good

After having completed her HSC exams, Laura finished school in style this week with a graduation event and an evening formal on Thursday. She had the 'full works' in preparation for the day (posh frock, hair, nails, tan, makeup) as is the requirement and we all attended the graduation at the school in the last afternoon.

She was then whisked off to the city with a group of friends in a limo and they had their formal dinner and dance at Darling Harbour until midnight, which apparently went well. They were then hoping to spend the rest of the night clubbing in the city, but either couldn't get in to some clubs (too full with other school parties) or the clubs were closing! So they ended up trying to get transport home for several hours but had fun regardless!

So Laura has now finished school and awaits her exam results in December. She's taking a gap year which will include some travelling and work before hopefully starting Uni in 2010. She's also got the next few weeks sorted, with 'schoolies week' soon and then a 2-week trip to South Africa, so more about these soon!

Sue’s birthday weekend

Clive returned from his week in the UK on Tuesday evening, complete with a cold, but accompanied by half the Australian cricket team at the airport. By Friday he had recovered enough to enjoy a meal out with me in Garfish, a lovely fish restaurant at Manly wharf. We really enjoyed the meal and then walked back to the car accompanied by a fantastic lightening display over the water – luckily the rain held off until we were back home!

My birthday, Saturday, dawned warm but wet, so we had a really lazy morning and a great family game of Monopoly in the afternoon – well, I thought it was great, as I won convincingly!

We had been hoping to join the bike club for a long ride on Sunday, but as the weekend approached it became obvious that neither of us was really fit enough, so we pulled out. I then had a call from a tennis friend whose daughter-in-law’s parents own a 1,000 acre livery stables near Windsor, an hours’ drive west of Sydney. She was organising a ‘Tennis Day’ at the stables for the Sunday and would we like to come? Although an early start for the bike ride would have been difficult, getting to the stables for 11am was less so and we were pleased to accept.

We reached the livery stables - Haddon Farm - at around 11:15 and met the other 14 guests, all of whom were very pleasant and interesting people and the majority of whom played tennis. We sat in and around the ‘entertainment building’, which was like a barn with a large kitchen and living area, with 2 patios outside, one next to a pool with a bbq and the other by the tennis court. Everyone had chipped in with food and drinks and we had a lovely day playing games of tennis with lunch in between! Such hardship!

The building was surrounded by fields with a few trees for shade, leading down to a large dam. All the water comes from the dam, so we couldn’t drink from the taps and although it looked like a large volume of water, apparently there have been times of drought when the owners have had to buy water in for their and the horses needs.

The farm was built on empty land in the 1970's and in its heyday accommodated 180 horses, mostly racehorses 'on holiday' from Sydney, plus some riding school and privately-owned ponies too, but at the moment they only have around 50 steeds. The lady owner paid us a visit during the afternoon – she’s originally from the US but has also lived in South Africa before setting up the farm in Sydney, so her accent was interesting! She and her husband are considering winding the stables down, as the amount of work keeping them running is enormous, but their grown-up children don’t want them to – maybe they should run it?

We got home in time for a beautiful dinner cooked for us by Laura. I love birthdays at weekends, they last so much longer than weekday ones!

Final sailing lesson

It was our third and final sailing lesson on Saturday afternoon and the conditions were up another level this time, which made for a good progression over the the three lessons. Several people dropped out this week due to the cloudier weather (and a hint of rain) which meant that we were down to three on our yacht (plus the instructor) although this meant we had more time to do all the necessary tasks.

The conditions were also windier this week so it made it more challenging again to get the right wind angle, which led to some good slanting decks at times! The other yacht in our lesson also had a 'man overboard' incident which was not intentional but we had to manoeuvre around to help them retrieve the student! The three lessons have been a good introduction and although we're not confident yet to take a boat out on our own, we will hope to get more experience possibly by crewing in the future.

Today I'm off to the UK for a week, so Sue & I took a long walk from Freshwater to Shelley Beach in the morning. All the beaches were packed with the 'nippers' groups of children having beach races and other activities which made quite a sight in their coloured outfits. The walk was a good one and set me up nicely for 24 hours on a plane.