FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX: Lake Macquarie

Thursday 10 December 2020

Lake Macquarie

Today we gave our legs and butts a different type of workout...cycling. It was another exhausting day...

Any Australian would understand the satisfaction of finding free street parking in summer that is in the shade, especially one that remains so most of the day. That was us. Gold stars to the Ongs for the spectacular spots - side by side too! Our aim was to get to the self service bicycle rental at Warners Bay early. That was vital for us to cycle the shores of Lake Macquarie. We only brought 2 bikes. There were only a total of 8 bicycles available for hire. We needed every single one...We got to the bike rack at 830 and were relieved to find all 8 bicycles still on the rack. Fortunately there was enough bicycles of various sizes to suit the various heights of our party of 10. Having cleaned out the bikes at Warners Bay and the pies at Swansea the day before we hoped that we weren't being followed by some other unlucky family cursing their luck.

After a few last minute sun screen applications and bag rearrangements we were off. We stopped at the fitness points that looked more fun than strenuous and kept our efforts to single figure reps. We didn't want to risk going too hard too early. Our small wheeled, three gear rental bikes gave us just enough speed to overtake the odd mum running along pushing a double decker jogging pram, but we were occasionally challenged by a pensioner on a suped up mobility scooter. The kids were energentic enough to zoom ahead along with Malcolm on his 29 inch e-bike until he swapped with Lara and had to join the rental brigade.

2 hours and 12.8km later, we returned having stopped at playgrounds and various points of interest. We arrived back in time for a lunch that we were all looking forward to. Subway under a bit of shade in the park and a cold drink left us all satisfied and ready to head home.

Self service bike rental rack

The free helmets were at the Subway across the road on an honour system!

Making sure the helmets fit

Making sure the bikes were the right size

Scuptures along the way

It was hard keeping up with the energy of youth...

Speers Point Park

Mini bike trails with its own petrol station!

The man with the e-bike should not be the one who is tired!

Relaxing lunch by the water

We made it back in one piece!

Our awesome parking spot

The Ongs had some sort of rapid kid charger in their car. Their boys all had a power nap on the way back then found the energy to power on to the beach. Lara and Jonah joined them, but we headed for a siesta. The beach was followed by the pool and then our excellent holiday routine of predinner drinks that have involved various gin experiments. Today was raspberry gin with Bumdaberg guava sparkling drink and fresh strawberries - not bad.

Dinner was back to Belmont 16s to cash in on our membership. Thursday is chicken wing day. We were concerned that 6kg of chicken wings was overdoing it. We didn't quite get there, but we got close. If only we hadn't started with a the large loaded fries we might've done it! We had planned to fish at the jetty (we had to use our rod!), but it was simply too windy. Given that the prawns had already defrosted and that we are heading to Coffs tomorrow we decided to feed the fish and throw a couple of token casts in. We lasted all of three minutes.. probably not great use of Malcolm's fishing registration so we'll have to have another go at some stage.