We started the day with breakfast by the pool. The midnight buffet was positively small compared with the amount and variety of food on offer for breakfast! There was so much food to choose from it was hard to decide what to eat. And really, really hard not to eat too much!! This morning I settled for some fruit, a delicious pistachio nut-filled, honey-drizzled pastry and a small bowl of muesli with yoghurt. After breakfast we had a wander around the resort to familiarise ourselves with where everything thing is. With a better idea of how to find our way around, we returned to our room and changed into our swimwear, collected the iPad and the Kindle with our reading material on them and ventured down to the adult beach. That being 'adult' as in no ... read more

Well ... we are settling into relaxation mode really quickly!! We had another lazy morning before going for a drive to Werneth Low Country Park with Kath and Albert. The park includes a cenotaph that commemorates the men and women of Hyde who lost their lives in the first and second World Wars. The cenotaph sit high atop the bluff with panoramic views over the City of Greater Manchester. The sun was breaking through patchy clouds, but with a really stiff breeze blowing it was pretty brisk up at the park. It was good kite-flying weather though, with a couple of colourful kites being flown. Why is it called Werneth Low anyway when it is so high above Manchester and its surrounds? I must check a map ... I guess there must be a High Werneth ... read more

We began our holiday this morning with an early start so that we could take the dogs for a nice long walk before leaving home. Good for them and good for us since we are going to be cooped up an an aeroplane for about 24 hours! After our walk we had our breakfast, did some last minute cleaning and finished off our packing. All we really had left to pack was our toiletries after showering and cleaning our teeth. Our house sitter, Eddie, arrived just before 10.00am and we went out for another quick walk just to reassure ourselves (and Eddie) that he was going to be OK to manage the two dogs on his own. We introduced him to the correction chain for Finbar - just to help to remind him not to pull ... read more

We decided to have a lazy day today to celebrate our 30th Wedding Anniversary!! We hadn't booked any tours or excursions today so that we didn't have to make an early start to catch a boat or a train. After a lazy morning we went to the supermarket and purchased a few items to take out to Crystal Cascades for a picnic lunch. Crystal Cascades is a series of waterfalls and swimming hole in Freshwater Creek located a few kilometres out of Cairns. It's not really a tourist destination, more of a local secret and not all that easy to find. There was only one signpost along the way, but we eventually found ourselves at Crystal Cascades. We parked the car and were greeted by signs telling us to BEWARE STINGING TREE. Being wary of touching ... read more

Today we took the Falcon X6 for a drive up the coast to Cape Tribulation. On our way up the coast we stopped at Mossman Gorge. There were quite a few people there to swim in the river, but when we headed off on the 2.4km rainforest loop we had it almost to ourselves! The strangler figs in this part of the rainforest were quite impressive with a couple of particularly large specimens. From the gorge we continued on to the Daintree River and made the ferry crossing to continue up as far as we could drive without a four wheel drive vehicle. We stopped at the Daintree Discovery Centre cafe for a quick bite to eat before driving the rest of the way up the coast. We opted not to go into the discovery centre ... read more