Jervis Bay to Eden
After a wholesome breakfast we set out on the road to Eden, the coast was delightfully pretty and we made several detours which ended up in us looking at a number of really pretty beaches.
Our first call was to Durras which had a small lookout overlooking a sandy beach with a small number of tourists on it. The first thing you notice is that there is no development, no houses or hotels on the beach, unlike so much of Europe.
We stopped in Bateman's Bay to buy sandwiches and had them a little later on the beach at Moruya on a picnic bench overlooking the sea.this would have been a wonderful place to have lunch apart from the force six gale which was blowing straight off the sea into our faces. The sandwiches were not as good as we had first imagined. My roast beef salad sandwich had anchovies in it. It takes a particularly warped person to put any sort of fish into a roast beef salad. Rosemarie had a roast chicken salad sandwich, but didn't enjoy it all as the chicken appeared to have been reconstituted, in fact she felt it was so poor she didn't eat all of it. The wind was so cold we had our banana and chocolate bar in the safety of the car.
After lunch we drove along the coast and made a detour to Potato Point. This was a fantastic spot, another unspoilt beach on one side and fewer tourists, on the other side was a rocky cliff somewhat reminiscent of Cornwall. We have already decided this is an area we would like to explore further if we get the opportunity to come again.
The rest of the drive to Eden was pretty much the same as we hugged the coast, coming to beach after beach, some more crowded than others.
We arrived in Eden and were a little disappointed that our motel was someway out, in fact as the receptionist said "It is up two hills" and as I couldn't manage even a slight slope with my calf, it meant we had to drive in.
Eden is in a wonderful setting ,as the name implies, a deep double bay harbour and unspoilt beaches all around. We drove in to the town to look around and then went back to the motel for a coffee having spied a fish and chip restaurant for our supper. In the process of drinking our coffee on the verandah outside our room, I shut the door to keep the flies and heat out. This was a slight mistake on my part, as I managed in one foul swoop, to lock us out of our room. This did not please Rosemarie one bit as she had to walk off around the motel to get the spare key, to say she was not very pleased would be a minor understatement. In fact I had to hobble back with the key as a form of appeasement.
Having rested for a while we drove back into town at 7.30pm to get some food. The restaurant we had chosen had stopped serving for the day.Luckily on the way to it we had spotted another fish and chip shop so we went back, only to find that one had closed as well. What sort of tourist destination allows all of its fish and chip shops to close so early? We did find a pizza takeaway place open so went in there and ordered a Chicken De Luxe to take back to our motel room. It turned out to be quite a good pizza with lots of topping and we were both able to have a couple of beers with it.
This and the fact the chef in our motel was ill and so there were no meals in the motel at all,seemed to me to be odd in a supposedly tourist destination.
So a wonderful setting, a pleasant little town but rather difficult to get an evening meal might be a good summary. To be fair we could have eaten in the local pub or in the fishermen's' social club but neither really struck us as what we wanted. I did say to Rosemarie that we would probably have got good fish in the fishermen's' social club, but we didn't go in so what can we say.
Tomorrow onto Bright.