Saturday morning, 8am, where else would I be but at Parkrun? So off I went to the Echuca/Moama Parkrun, battling a head cold, and ran a PB – 39:15! OK, it is a very flat course, but hey, I’m taking the PB anyway.
Gary picked me up from the finish line and it was back for a quick shower and then time to pack the car and head off. But first we needed a celebratory brekkie so we found a great little café in Echuca and shared an awesome meal of poached eggs and avocado on toast and pancakes with strawberries – yum yum.
It was then back on the road to head to Bendigo. We have been listening to an audiobook of The Firm by John Grisham since we left home, but hadn’t had a chance to listen to it since we arrived in Echuca, so it was good to get back into it. We were having problems with the bike rack and had to stop a few times to tighten it, but managed to make it to Bendigo by the 12pm appointed time to meet up with Kevin and Marian. They had been on a tour of an underground gold mine which they said was really good.
We all joined the one hour tram ride around Bendigo and enjoyed our driver Steve, who played the tape recorded commentary but added some of his own. We saw the sights of Bendigo - lots of history - and also spent some time at a tram museum, somewhere we remembered visiting with the kids about 25 years ago. Particularly, we enjoyed his continued bell ringing at rogue motorists who kept driving in and blocking the tram lane. Most enjoyable! (I’m a bit worried now about the Newcastle light rail and how we will negotiate it lol).
After we had done the loop, we all decided to get back on the tram and take a ride to the CBD area of Bendigo to check it out. We had a look in Roslyn Park where there was a Scottish festival of some kind happening … but decided against having lunch there – the haggis did not really appeal. Instead, we found a great Turkish restaurant and had some more yummy food. Suffice it to say, no one wanted any dinner later!
After riding the tram back to our cars, Gary and I headed off in search of a hardware store to find some special spanner thingy to better tighten the bike rack. We found it, tightened it, and then found it still twisted! Very frustrating. In the end we took some backroads to Ballarat, via Daylesford, but didn’t end up stopping to explore as we had intended. We were keen to get to the next stop … and I wanted to watch the Jets play at 5:30pm. Kevin and Marian stopped in Daylesford and said it was a lovely town.
After some confusion – at one point we had 3 different digital maps going at once in the car – we arrived in Ballarat and found the caravan park. After a quick unpack, I ramped up the wifi and started streaming the Jets game on my Foxtel app on the iPad. Yay, I will be able to watch the game! Unfortunately, the game froze at about the 25 minute mark and I later discovered I had exceeded my daily wifi limit already! How frustrating! I then spent the next hour or so pacing around the caravan park glued to the Jets app that gives an update if a goal is scored or something major happens. What a game! Great result (Newcastle 2 – Sydney 1) but I was so frustrated not to be there. I think I’ve been to every home game this season. I did manage to wash and dry a couple of loads of washing during that time, so it wasn’t a total waste of time.
Need an early night I think…
No comments:
Post a Comment