Day 414 | Still at Point Ann: I walk the beach and tuck in for a third night
rest day 2
I awake to find there’s a cold snap, good news as the recent warmish weather had drizzle accompaniment.
Cooler means there’s been a change through and that mist might just disappear for a few days. It’s generally more pleasant biking when you can see where you are going and a week has been quite sufficient of wanna be precipitation. Wanna be but just can’t quite make it.
One of the great joys of the trip is to occasionally get off the bike and go for a walk.
Huh? You can get off the bike?
Yup. Stretch some different muscles.
Somehow with this endless sleeping on my Thermorest on the ground, with the damp conditions of the last week I’ve developed some lower back pain and walking along a long beach is as good a way as any to address it.
Instead of my usual shambolic, loping gait, (instantly picking me out in any crowd, even way in the distance, I’m reliably informed), I assume a military stance, shoulders back, stomach in, (bit easier these days), a robotic beach walking machine.
Ain’t so easy in the soft squeaky sand.
There’s no one about to comment as I march for a couple of hours to where the beach ends in another rocky stretch of coastline. (At the end I realise I now have to walk back.)
Early on there’s little wind and I can spot plenty of decent sized fish surfing along the waves before they break. (Yesterday I watched a pod of about 20 Bottle nosed dolphins nosing their way around the bay.)
It’s fantastically relaxing. The air temperature has climbed to about 23°C, the water just a few degrees cooler. The waves rumbling in one side. Big sand dunes on the other. I spot two wallabies remarkably close to the surf, and they hop a few paces and give up. I’m no great threat despite my unusual posture.
Later a solitary rare hooded plover. No wonder they are endangered when they don’t have a mate. Smaller than I had anticipated it goes about its business unconcerned by my intrusion.
I climb a sand dune at the end of the beach to look at the view.
In the distance I spot a lone figure in a 4WD ute. He drives slowly right to the end of the beach, just below where I perched right up the dunes, unaware, I guess, of my presence. Rocks and then cliffs block any further forward motion. Mission accomplished he sat for a minute and without getting out of his truck turned and returned.
Were my wanderings, marching, in any way diminished by the bloke getting there sitting on his arse? Not at all. I’ve ceased to think of life as a competition if I ever, in fact, did.
It’s a fantastic view from high in the sand dunes, watching a giant white sea eagle watch me.
My back is feeling much better and life is great.