Day 109 – Christmas Eve

Woke up to gray sky’s and sticky humidity. I joined Nick for a bit of shopping in the Westfield Mall; he went for seafood and I picked up a couple of bottles of Tasmanian Champaign. The mall is huge and sits in the middle of the town a bit like the Bull Ring in Birmingham.

With an hour or so to kill before meeting up with Sandy I borrow Nick’s bike and headed for the South Head and Watson’s Bay. I was keep to see the view of North Head, from where I’d been gazing South a few days prior. The area around Bondi is pretty hilly and built up so the ride was slow and the view not that good. As I turned of the Old South Head Road towards Watson Bay I started getting glimpses of of the Harbour. It was a more direct view than I’d seen before as the South Head runs near parallel to the bridge. Reaching the end of the road I followed a short path to a view point that looks over to Manly and the North Head.

Around midday Sandy picked me up and we headed over to Curl Curl, or Curly as its known. There we did a couple of laps of the beach. The first was in the soft sand and my legs felt the burn after the cycling. I was glad too take to the chilly sea to cool down after running. The waves over the sandbank provided some good body surfing and a couple of times I found myself being tumbled around in the white water.

Running on empty we headed to the Wharf Bar in Manly for some food. On the way round Sandy pointed out Freshwater Bay. Sitting in between Curly and Manly its well hidden; I’d run past it before but not spotted it. I’d also noticed as statue on the headland but not thought much of it; in fact its a stature of The Duke, the Hawaiian who brought surfing to Australia with the fist surf at Freshwater.

At the Wharf bar we met up with a few of Sandy’s mates and joined them for a few beers. Thee group thinned out as the few beers turned into a few more. The remaining two guys were Higgsy and Mousy; Higgsy is going to be coming to Mollymook with us. Feeling peckish we headed to Beaches for Pizza, some of the best I’ve ever had.

Leaving Manly we headed over to Sandy’s parent’s house and then onto the Oaks pub where we met up with Nick. We sat in the beer garden under a huge oak tree and drank way too much.

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