Upon waking the cottage was bloody freezing, the last thing I wanted to do was get out from under the lovely warm covers, with the lovely warm Nadege and venture out into the unthawed early world. But I forced myself to move, shivering as I searched for clothes and cringing when I put the icy garments on. I crammed all my stuff into my bags and got ready to leave while Nadege got dressed herself and put the kettle on, I told her she didn’t have to get up for me and she should stay in bed but she told me “No it’s ok, I’m not, I want to see Helen.” All ready, we sat outside with a cup of tea in the fresh morning air while waiting for the bus to turn up and drag me away from the scene. Which it promptly did. Helen and Nadege hugged each other and spoke for a second whilst I dumped my stuff in the trailer and then I had my turn for a goodbye, which I never like doing. We hugged, kissed, said goodbye, and I got on the bus feeling a little embarrassed as they clearly all had a good view and I’m not a fan of having spectators during intimate moments. I don’t mind writing about it.
The last day of the Southern Curl tour was another one full of fun, we went to the valley of the giants, where they have yet more Karri trees to walk among and a skinny little walkway up at the top of the trees which swayed with each step so that it felt like being on a ship, not that many ships ever end up that high above ground. There were trees big enough to stand inside, some big enough for several of us to stand inside, ones you could walk straight through a hole in one side and out a hole in the other, tall trees, skinny trees, fat trees or just plain burnt, there was a lot.
After the trees it was time to hit the beach, we went to one that apparently the tour hadn’t been before, just to check it out. That’s another thing about the Easy Rider, they are perfectly happy to change around the schedule and find a different beach or winery or whatever, unless of course it’s day 1 and you’re a grumpy old man that looks like Benny Hill with a recently broken back and don’t like walking or swimming or caves or anything else that people come to Australia for, and the rest of the group does like it. That’s just being difficult. So anyway we hit the beach and apart from the stupendous amount of flies it was great, nice view and lovely cool water. We spent a while mucking around with the Christmas hat, ate lunch and then took a swim before dribbling back to the bus everyone according to their own schedule.
After that was another tasting at a toffee and ice cream shop, this place had a hay bale with half a cyclist sticking out, sheer genius if you ask me. John the Irishman in our group, who was also extremely loud, always drunk, very sunburned, tubby and talked far too much and in far too much detail about his sexual encounters with what I assume to be chickens but he called ‘birds’; proceeded to pig out and clear out the tasting trays. Amusingly they had a picture of a pig with a red cross through it above the trays, which prompted the statement “Clearly they don’t want you here John" repeatedly by several people. Then we played ring toss outside, a game which I usually suck at yet somehow managed a 3 in a row at which point I declared myself Champion.
The last stop was at another little bit of coast, with more flies, this time of the stinging variety. But it was beautiful so it made up for it, and there were rocks to climb! Climb we did, Burt and myself swimming round one of the rocks and climbing to the top, we weren’t sure whether it was deep enough so I jumped in to test it out, then we jumped off repeatedly, and even managed to convince Fiona and a couple others to jump off too. The end of that day was spent in Albany, where I headed to the YHA there run by a very sweet couple, I don’t actually know if they were a couple but both were very sweet all the same. Here I met Clair again, it really is a small world, and what were the odds of me moving backpackers and finding her there!
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