Day 39 - Coogee to Bondi walk, and beaches

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A good start to the day. It was a natural wake up, in a very comfy bed!
I walked into the living room to find Bernard chilling on his double blow up bed. He said he’d also had a comfy night, with his downgrade!

We started the day with a catch up chat, then agreed on eggs with toast for brekky. This also came with a banana, coffee, and all sorts of protein stuff to kick start our day. It was nice. I enjoyed brekky today.

We spent a while, getting our stuff together for the day ahead. We are going on a short train journey, then a bus journey, which will take us to Coogee, which is where our walk will start. We hit perfect timing today, we hit the train with a 3 minute wait, then went out of the train station to wit about 2 minutes for the bus. Perfect timing! The walk will take us round the coast, to finnish at Bondi Beach.

We caught the bus in Newtown. It screams, ‘artisan, young, free and easy’, vibe. I like the feel if it. This specific part of it reminds me of, the Avenues’, area at home.

We arrived at Coogee at 11:20. It’s very busy here. We’ve decided to start our walk with an iced flat white. We will walked over to take a look at Coogee Beach. It’s beautiful!

The coastal walk is a well signposted route. It has ups, and downs, wooden walkways and stairs that take you from one end to the other. It is around 6kn long. There are 6 bays that you can dip into during the walk. They are: Dunningham Park, Gordon’s Bay, Clovelly Beach, Brontë Beach, Tamarama and finally Bondi Beach. It should definitely be mentioned that you also pass a huge cemetery called Caverley Cemetery.

At about half way, I was feeling sweaty, but still good about the all. I’m certain that over the past 37 days, due to regular exercise asking, my stamina has definitely improved. This is a huge motivation for me to continue walking when I return home.

We had a few random stops, and sit downs, on the walk. We had a nut bay break, an apple break, and plenty of water breaks. Each break was enjoyed by many conversation about life, present, past and future, about comparing differences between people from varying cultures, and countries, and generally, putting the world to rights. It’s so good to v able to spend the time with Bernard, just letting life flow. It’s good for the heart, and soul.

It took us about 2 hours to do the 6km walk, without rest times, it was a beautiful walk. If i say that once, I would have to repeat it for each bay, because the whole costal walk was amazing.

I have to say though, Bondi Beach was equally as nice as all of the others, just longer. Honestly, as lovely as it was, I was underwhelmed. I think you see it on TV, you hear about it etc, then you build it up in your imagination. I was expecting so much more, which sounds crazy because it really is lovely!

When we arrived in Bondi, our final bay, we laid our towels out. I think we were both ready for a cooling down swim in the sea by this time! It was everything that we needed at that time. We made the most of our time there, by enjoying the opportunity to lay down and sunbathe for a while too. To be honest, I definitely nodded off for a short while!

The life guards on Bondi Beach, and every other bay we passed, have a strong, obvious presence. They play a very important role for the beach life existence of all the people here. What is more impressive, a lot of them work on a volunteer basis. They certainly do command the beach to offer a safer environment for all.

At around 5:15, we decided that it was time to move on. We collected our stuff together to leave the beach. Oh… that short walk, barefoot through the sand, is a killer. The whole walk has not phased me at all, but that 50 feet of sand… wow! Ha ha

We spent a bit of time on the promenade, just dusting down the sand, and getting dressed, ready to move on. We decided that it is time for a drink, so we set off to the far end of the beach. All along the promenade all the way along the promenade is an array of wall art. Some is better than others, but it’s all good to see.

We dropped off for a loo stop in The, newly refurbished, Pavillion. When I came out, Bernard had bumped into a group of 3 of his friends. He does his Viscous Cycling classes with them. It was good to meet them, as I may be attempting a trial class, just for the experience! 2 of them are instructors. I hope they have a defibrillator! Ha ha

We continued walking, then dropped off again, this time to buy Bondi tee shirts for Thea and Ava. Finally, we made it to the RSL, it’s similar to UK British Legion Club! We were happy to find a seat. I was going to have a coffee, but today, I changed my mind, I’m having a small beer!

When we came out of the RSL club…. It was dark!!!! Where has this day gone? The good thing about that is that we are filling every single minute of our time together, which is perfect! We made our way out to the bus stop, which is a short ride to the train station. We got off to find that the continuing train is cancelled due to tramline works. So we had to shift the plan to a second bus, to join with a different train. To be honest, it didn’t really make a lot of difference! We were that one, then onto the next one. That will be the final train to get us home.

We left home at 10:30 this morning, it’s now 8:30pm. It’s been another long, but brilliant day!

When got home, Bernard put dinner on, whilst I got showered. We had chicken and vegetable biryani. He such a good cook. We enjoyed our dinner, then it was a nose dive of tiredness to bedtime.

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Comments

[Andrea]

Enjoying yourself
Hiya it looks like your enjoying yourself it looks amazing and you drinking beer you will be a bear monster when you come home have a great time c u soon xx

[Angela]

WOW.....just WOW!
Walked that with you! Beautiful.