14th August 2023 (sunny and warm) 0km

Woke to a nice morning and to the two tents that were pitching last night, as we were trying to sleep.  Now I know that we're nice people, but do you think you could get any closer?  Some people have no awareness of space.  It would have been OK for one tent, but two?

We wouldn't care if the grounds were full, but as you can see in the photo, they were not.
And that was only our area, there were other spaces with no one in them.
Must have been that Cologne I had on.
Bike sweat by Iva Velo.

The cows basking on the beach.

Julia studiously ignores the space invaders.

Really? Looks like they're part of our gang.

Seriously,  could you not get any closer???

It's not like there's a lack of space.

Up and over to the kitchen before anyone else was awake to finish the blog.

Back at the tent we ate breakfast at the picnic table out the front of our tent, enjoying the view of the beach. Struck up a conversation with Melissa and Jesse, the young Dutch couple on the other side of us that we met yesterday.

They went whale watching late this arvo and showed us a video and they were buzzing about it. We talked at normal volume because by now it was 8.30am and the French space invaders still hadn't emerged from their tent. If we woke them up, well, we just didn't care.

As we were talking, Shane the cyclist rode over to say goodbye and get our Facebook address. He's on his way south on his ebike.

Not a bad lifestyle he leads.

We had a chat about life on the road and like us he loves the sense of freedom and taking time to enjoy life, rather than rush past it.

Even life in a tent which is a simplistic form of housing, yet so effective.

Once he'd pedalled off to places unknown, we headed off on a hike up Matinden 408 metres high.

There was a guy and a girl with a lovely Australian Shepard mini, in a van at the start of the climb and we commented on the dog.

The beginning of the climb needed us to use handholds at various points and it came to a narrow track overlooking a steep drop, before it flattened out over grass and mossy ground cover.

A gentle sloping walk took us to a long steep incline to the summit and fantastic views.

Although there was cloud cover, it wasn't low enough to cause concern or block our views.

We wandered around at the top, taking shots from various angles.

Spoke to the couple with the cute dog, who had also made the hike.

Found out she was half American/Austrian and he was German.

They were sitting on the summit with this little six month old pup on a lead.  I'd have been scared stiff the dog would have chased the sheep over the cliffs, or just run off the edge, but they were pretty chilled.  Lower down on the slopes we'd stopped to eat and now we just topped up.

The wind had risen slightly and we could see some rain on its way, which had been forecasted to show up earlier. In fact we were beginning to think it wasn't going to rain at all and putting our wet weather gear in the pack had been an unnecessary precaution. But this was a reminder to always take your waterproofs because mountain weather can change so quickly. As we felt the first drips, we donned our waterproof pants and raincoat.

That worked a treat but the water running off the pants, wet our shoes because our knees weren't making a cycling motion.

The rain probably only lasted 40 minutes, but got us wet, especially the shoes.

We followed the couple and their dog down the mountainside and we all stopped to take off our rain gear and got chatting. 

Nicky and Martin reside in Lienz, Austria although they did spend five years in Colorado, where Nicky's parents are from.

They have travelled a lot and Nicky was in New Zealand, in Wanaka 15 years ago on a working holiday.

We traded emails and invites to each other's homes, before bidding them and their gorgeous pup Dinali farewell.

He certainly got Julia wanting another dog.

Who wouldn't want one?

Cycled back to camp to find our encroaching neighbours had moved our picnic bench to their patch! I don't think so buddy! They weren't there so we moved the bench back and padlocked our bikes to them. Ha! 2-1 to us. 

Over to the cafe where we ordered two paninis as we are now nearly out of food. Then we grabbed a shower, before blogging in the kitchen over a coffee, by which time it was 6pm. Wandered back to the tent and our seaside bench to reassert ownership. Bit of a shame we haven't got internet at the tent, as after ten weeks together all day, every day, we only have so much left to say to each other.

Managed to keep the neighbours out of this shot.

Scraped the bottom of the panniers for dinner and came up with......you guessed it, rice and mackerel. We're going to rename it McRicekies to make it sound more appealing.

We were just finishing when our neighbours returned. So we rearranged our washing, had a cup of water and remained at our bench, blogging. They were then forced to go and use one of the other ten vacant picnic benches.

Once they were firmly ensconced in their meal, we returned to the kitchen for wifi. Also grabbed an ice-cream to help keep the wolves from the door. The pictures and blog were very slow to load, despite the camp only having about half the residents of last night.

Back to the tent at 9.30pm, pleased to see the noisiest member of the French invaders, sitting at a picnic bench, far away from our tent, along with her sister (we think). Took our antihistamines and snuggled into our sleeping bags as it was quite cold. The sisters took this as the sign to attack and tramped noisily (and closely by the sound of it) to the tent, opening and banging shut the car door at frequent intervals. They talked loudly and I was laying there thinking, should I pop my head out and remind them this is polyester material, not a solid block wall?  But the drowsiness of the antihistamine took over and I fell deeply into lala land.