Time for a break after slogging away at work

Now I don’t want to sound like some old comedian, but what is it with men who don’t wan to ask for directions from their girlfriends, I mean, what’s that all about??

The plan was simple, Lee and I wanted to get out of the city for a couple of days and David and Nerida had said we could use their car if we wanted. We thought we would take ourselves off down to The Mornington Peninsula which is supposed to be lovely and crash out and relax for a few days so that we could recover from the “strenuous” seven days work we had just completed in the elections. Lee managed to find a magic wee guesthouse down there so we just hopped in the car and set off. Mornington Peninsula is only about an hour and a half drive from Melbourne so we set off from Richmond at about half past four in the afternoon, me driving and Lee reading the directions from the Australian equivalent of AA routefinder. All we had to do was get onto Yarra Boulevard and then onto the freeway and the rest would pretty much take care of itself. Just as we were about to hit Yarra Boulevard though, I ended up on the approach ramp to the freeway, looking back over my shoulder as the required street disappeared behind us. Lee was pretty calm beside me during all this and just said that she thought we were actually on the right road anyway, but guess who was having none of it ?? I managed to get us off the freeway and back onto what I thought was the right way and we drove around for about an hour, asking various people the best way to get onto the right Highway to get us to Sorrento. After an hour Lee had had enough and made me pull into a shop and ask for directions, so in we go and ask one of the guys who worked there. He was really helpful and gave us the right directions and sent us on our way.

“Just out of curiosity mate, where about in Melbourne are we right now?” I said.

“Richmond mate”

We’d driven for over an hour and had ended up about 40 yards from the house we’d set off from. Basically the rest of the trip consisted of Lee looking at me and smiling and me just sitting going “shut up” every 5 minutes.

The Mornington Peninsula is a really nice part of Victoria, probably not as famous as The Great Ocean Road, but there is the same amount, if not more places to visit down there. You are right on the coast of Victoria so it’s a really nice drive down to Sorrento and it’s a large wine producing region in the state so there were loads of vineyards to see while you’re on the way there (more of those later). We got to Sorrento at about half past seven in the evening and checked into the hotel, it was just a two minute walk from the beach and it meant that we could get a brilliant sunset each night from our balcony. Which was nice.

Sorrento itself was dead when we got there, and to be honest I didn’t like the look of the place, but Lee pointed out that it was a Wednesday evening and it probably wouldn’t be that busy in the middle of the week. As usual, she was right. We went out and grabbed a meal and a bottle of wine and then headed back up to the point to get a couple of photos of the sunset.

For once on our trip we got good weather for going to Sorrento so we got up on the Thursday and took a walk around town, it had come alive this point and wasn’t the kind of place that The Specials would have sung about after all. It’s a really lively wee place, right on both coasts of the Peninsula, and it’s really handy for getting to anywhere in the area. We took a drive along the coast to Blairgowrie (Aussie’s have a tendency to name towns after someone else’s if the Aborigine’s haven’t named it first) and had a look round, and decided that as we basically had the run of our hotel, we’d head back and get a couple of bottles of wine and soak up some sun on the hotel balcony listening to a bit of Santana and the Beach Boys (thank you Mr Broon), lovely so it wiz !!

On the Friday we were due to leave, we took the ferry from Sorrento to Queenscliffe, which is a town about half an hour away on the ferry and is one end of The Great Ocean Road. It’s a little bit like walking into a Disney Western town at first, with saloons and souvenir shops. It’s also has a maritime museum, which didn’t look too interesting to be honest so we settled for a crepe at one of the café’s that make up about 50% of the main street. They had a lovely courtyard so we decided to sit and stuff our faces and just chill reading the papers drinking Iced Coffee in the sun, not taking any heed to the waitresses warning of sitting out too long in the heat, turns out it was 37c…mmmmm. Queenscliffe is a nice wee place but there’s not much else to it really.

It was back to the hotel after that to pick up the car and head back to sunny/rainy/snowy/fiery (depends on which 15 minute period of the day you get there) Melbourne. On our way back, we took a detour and headed up a hill that you could get really good views of the Peninsula from. The hill is called Arthur’s Seat, I kid you not. Anyway, once again thanks to our top notch navigation skills, we took what you might call a “back road” up the hill. Basically it was a dirt track that was used by tractors and cattle I reckon and was about a 1:1 gradient. Now bear in mind we were driving a Daihatsu Charade “Sport” and half way up we saw Colin Macrae turning back saying it was too steep and sandy, it’ll give you an idea of the kind of nonsense we were putting their car through. We did make it to the top though and got some great pictures of the Peninsula looking back towards the city. Our drive back was fairly uneventful, mainly due to the fact that there is a straight road from Sorrento that leads you right into the city. Lee had gotten the hang of the Melways road map book (Melbourne has Melways, Brisbane has Brisways, Sydney has Sydways etc. Not sure what they have in Safeton….) and was able to direct us home without any fuss whatsoever. We’ve no idea why the internet did not direct us to this road in the first place, but there you go.

We’re off down the Great Ocean Road in a week or two so will report back on our adventure down there soon.

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