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The big holiday catch up post

We got back from our holiday yesterday, and what a gloried and various trip it was. We started with The Warbuton Trail Fest. unfortunately it was a very hot, total fire ban weekend. Leon's run got rerouted, which meant, instead of doing 50kms in the relative flat, he did 46kms, including running up and down Mount Donna Buang. My 14 km run started a bit earlier than planned and was quite pleasant.

We spent the rest of the weekend eating and drinking and and sitting around talking glorious nonsense with some of our favourite people.


On the Monday Kris, Leon and I headed for the airport, where were flew to Adelaide to see Fringe Festival shows and go to breweries.

 We averaged two shows a day and two breweries, so it was a good time. We had a good mixture of stand-up, circus and musical comedy. As a bonus, Trevor Jones, our favourite cabaret singer, was performing nightly in The Garden of Earthly Delights, so there was singing as well.

 Also, Adelaide is mad for strawberries, and I ate lots of fresh chocolate covered strawberries and that was delightful.

We went to The Yarn Trader, a very nice yarn shop in Port Adelaide, where I bought a skein of yarn to knit Leon a pair of socks to match his winter set. 

On Sunday Kris flew home and Leona and I took a bus to Cape Jervis to start the Wild South Coast Way on the Heyson Trail hike. Yes, that's what it's called. The Heyson trail is a 1200 km trail, and the Wild South Coast Way is a five day, four night portion of it. It's the fanciest (meaning shelters at each camp, and usually wooden camping platforms).

 It's also the only portion open during fire season. I've done a fair bit of hiking, but this was the first coastal hike I've done and it was stunning. Cliffs and dolphins and sea eagles. 

The hot weather we had in Adelaide continued until the first night, when it cooled down to perfect hiking weather.

We saw our only snake of the trip, and it was a beauty! We saw lots of other wildlife, including kangaroos, wallabies, frogs that kept us up all the first night, (feral) deer and many different kinds of birds. 

This was also where I finished Leon's winter scarf and started on the matching socks.

After 5 days and 80 km of walking without showering we were happy to march into Victor Harbour, get some lunch that didn't come out of our packs and  get clean. We spent 5 days in and around Victor Harbour, sitting and reading, walking and eating. We did Parkrun on Saturday, and generally rested and relaxed.

Then we headed to our final destination, that famous wine region McLaren Vale. This was great, because we hadn't realised how close everything was. We Walked up the Shiraz Trail (which is part of a larger rail trail) to get there. Our first full day we did a hop-on hop-off bus tour to some delightful wineries. 

Our second full day (Easter Friday) we hired bikes and rode to a winery / brewery. It was nice to be be back on a bike, even though these were pretty terrible!

On Easter Saturday we did Parkrun again - this one was on the Shiraz trail. If you look carefully at the background of that photo you can see a very creepy blow-up rabbit lurking about.

We then walked to the next town, to check out the farmers market, which was extensive, but not useful to us as we didn't have kitchen and were heading home the next day. So no alpaca steaks for us! Instead we went to two breweries and looked at some lovely shops.

So, three weeks of my favourite things - running, friends, hiking, good food and drinks, lots of sleeping and knitting and reading. I finished Leon's socks in the taxi on the way home from the airport, so I'll block his winter set and be back later in the week to chat about that.

Normally I sign these holiday posts off with talking about how I have to go clean the house, but the house-sitter we had left the place spotless and we did our laundry the last place we stayed. All I have to do is unpack, and write reviews for the 5 books I finished during our trip. what a luxury! 

I'll see you on Wednesday to tell you about what I am reading and knitting now.      

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