Adelaide (2)

Saturday 17th January

Not sure what we did during daytime hours but in the early evening we paid a quick trip over to Aldgate ro see how the site for the new house was coming on (WhatsApp has the photos).

Sunday 18th January

Our first, and so far only, proper walk. The Heysen Trail is a long distance - 1,200 kms (750 miles) - trail in South Australia and part of it passes through Bridgewater - right behind our little cottage, in fact. We took some advice from Kelly on what we could do and she recommended a loop up the Fire Trail that should take us approximately an hour or so.

The first bit is easy - flat, wide and well-defined - barring the odd termite mound:

We then turned off the main trail and went up the Fire Trail which involved a bit of elevation. We reached what we thought was the high point where, to complete the loop back to the main trail the name changed to Ridge Trail. That's when it started to get a little tricky. The path narrowed and we continued to climb. We passed a sign for a turn-off to the summit of Mount George, just 150 metres away, but carried on the Ridge Trail. It got pretty rocky and given the problems I was still having with my knee, post-op, and Jo with her COPD, we struggled a bit. When we eventually came to the end of the ridge and started the downward loop it got even more tricky and progress was slow.

I'm happy to report that we did eventually make it back down to ground level without any mishaps:

The moving part of our walk took us an hour and three quarters but the total elapsed time was 3 hours - there were frequent stops on the way. At the end of our walk the trail passed below the rear of our cottage - a view we hadn't seen before:

In the afternoon, Kelly drove all of us - bar Chris who was still working on clearing the Old Noarlunga house prior to it going on the market - over to Grunthal (https://grunthal.com.au/) - formerly Grumpy's but now transformed.

Monday 19th January

We all headed over to Old Noarlunga. While Miller was meeting with an old school pal, Jo and I took Asher for a short drive along the coast to revisit some of the places we used to go to - Port Noarlunga, Christie's Beach and beyond:

Of course, we had to bribe Asher with a visit to Beck's Bakehouse for ice cream.

Adelaide

A little later than scheduled, we arrived in Adelaide to a welcoming party of Kelly, Miller and Asher. They whisked us off to a deli where Kelly had ordered a huge "breakfast box" - fruits, breads etc. We are still working our way through it over a week later.

We checked in to our "charming historical cottage" in Bridgewater in the Adelaide Hills. Handily nearby is the Bridgewater Inn which has an enormous beer garden looking over Cox Creek. Across the road from that is a small shopping centre which has a decent-sized Coles supermarket where we were able to stock up our accommodation with essential food and drink supplies.

The owners of the cottage had left us a generous welcome pack of essentials, including champagne, luxury ice cream and chocolate. Everything seemed perfect but we later noticed that there was a bit of a damp issue downstairs where the utilities, bathroom and bedroom were. We soon resolved this matter by running the dehumidifier daily - as instructed by the owners.

Kelly, Chris and the boys had just moved in to a rental property nearby while their new house is being built. It is just a 10-15 minute walk along/beside a train line used occasionally by freight trains.

Our first full day in S.A. was Friday. It's school summer holidays here so we arranged to take the boys to Stirling while their parents worked. It was just a 10 minute bus journey from our place. We had planned to take the boys to Cacao, a chocolate/coffee shop but it was closed. We did manage to pick up books for Kelly at the library and we had lunch with Miller and Asher in the smart Stirling hotel.

The return journey meant a 15 minute walk from the bus stop to Kelly and Chris' rental, passing this odd looking tree:

Finally, we arrived:

That evening we all drove to Lobethal for a return visit to what used to be one of our favourite places - the Bierhaus. It was mobbed but Chris had booked a table so we were fine. We enjoyed a paddle - and a couple of cask ales in the atmospheric surroundings:

End of (full) day one - Friday 16th January.