Lulworth Adventures with the Chiverses

I'm in Hampshire with Zappa and family, and we got a call from Chivers saying he and Alice were somewhere near Swannage, Dorset and that we should come and have a deep water soloing day.

Deep water soloing is climbing above water without ropes, based on the concept that if you fall off you just fall into nice, safe, soft, deep water. Enthusiasts have taken it further by grading it on how true this idea actually is for the route, with S grades:

S0 - lots of deep water beneath you, perfectly safe (providing you can swim)
S1 - there might be the odd boulder and/or shallow bits you might want to watch out for
S2 - you should probably only do it at high tide, and pick your landing site carefully when you suddenly loose your footing and plummet downwards
S3 - don't fall off because you will almost definitely die.

We only do S0. Otherwise how is it fun? Anyway. Off we went to Lulworth cove, armed with chalk (for grip), a barbeque, an inflatable kayak and lots of clothes. It was blowing a gale and the sea was pretty choppy. I elected to be photographer.

The rock was doing crazy things. Just cos I hated geography doesn't mean I'm not completely amazed by stuff like this.

A brief sunny moment.  

The others decided to do a traverse all the way around the block on the right hand side of the cave, coming through the cave from the other side. Zappa did a recce of the other side in the kayak. He fell out immediately and I was laughing so hard I completely failed to take a picture.

Off they went, merrily, and I waited in line with the cave to get some good shots of them coming through the cave....

...err and they came back round the same way, looking very wet.



 They'd got halfway round and a big wave had rolled up. Zappa saw it and climbed higher, but Tom and Alice got drenched! Alice's legs actually got swept to the side and she somehow managed to cling onto two little crimpey holds to stop herself being washed down the rock face.

They decided to just stick to playing in the cave.

Joker.

Zappa comes off!

Zappa and I decided to go for a ride in the kayak so I could see the other side of the rock thingy. I don't know why I didn't grasp how rough the sea was going to be, I could see the waves coming through the cave the whole time and my friends had nearly gotten swept away, but it came as a terrifying surprise. It was ridiculous! I may have just screamed the entire time like some complete girl, couldn't help it. The sea was grey and white and churning, huge rocks would suddenly surface like whales right beside us - I was absolutely terrified! I really thought we'd soon be swimming. To get back through the cave we had to scoot alongside the horrible sometimes-submerged whale rock otherwise we'd miss the entrance. We got through and then a big wave came and dumped us on the rocks of the beach, quite conveniently really, it couldn't have been any luckier. I stopped screaming and proclaimed it enormous fun.

Julian Rocks

Today the weather was finally sunny after more days of rain. So we decided to go with a dive company to Julian Rocks, two big rocks sticking out of the ocean about 2km off The Pass, the break we usually surf in Byron. It's a marine reserve so things are still alive there.

Orange Basslets and an Exciting Purple Fish

Tall-fin Bat Fish

ooo...

Big Wobbegong shark! It was pretty deep for a snorkellor, I was rather pleased with myself.

Zappa

Me. 'Thumbs...down......yeees....well done.'

THEN:

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh......(angelic singing)

SO COOL! I love turtles!

After a while I actually started feeling a little seasick! Luckily that was just as we were sposed to leave, so nothing missed. I snorkelled for a whole hour, without even noticing the time going.

We met three Irish girls who were great fun, and a troop of Swiss French people. I felt very clever going over and speaking to one of them in French about the turtle we'd seen. How good is the French word for turtle: la tortue? Say it in a super French accent, it rocks. 'Vous avez vu la tortue? C'est magnifique non?!'

I loved the snorkelling, I mean look at what we saw. You know what though, I liked the boat ride just as much! One of those RIBs, and it felt soo good to be back on a boat, I've missed it so much! We zoomed over the waves, wooo into the sky and stomach-droppingly down. Such a good day!

Happy New Year!

Bonjour from Bellingen Library, the coldest part of Australia I've been to so far.

Zappa started the New Year with a boom by contracting some nasty tummy bug and spending 2 days cooped up in the house. Then he thought he'd round it off by going to a remedial massage guy to sort out his shoulder which has been bothering him for a while - look what the man did to him!!!

He looks like he's been abducted by aliens! He said it felt nice but it looks horrific. The circles are these suction cups the guy put on, and the lines are from this ceramic roller thing. Eek. He said his shoulder feels a lot better though.

Yesterday we took a picnic to Never Never Creek with some of the other housefull that we've been spending Christmas and New Year with.

It was a gorgeous day and the water was beautiful:

Sunny the dog came too. He's as mad as Poppy, my family Jack Russell, but without the nastiness. And he applies constant anti-logic to every situation. 'What would be the logical thing to do in reaction to this? Right, I'll do something completely different.'

Zappa, by Me

Me, by Zappa

Oh and you know I was raving about Jenny and Ray's ficus tree, Baby Ben? Well I found another of Jungle's relations:

P.S. Mum, check your junk mail box in your hotmail for an email from me, I used my uni account as hotmail doesn't like me today. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A Map, Whales, North Head and my first trip to the city

Firstly I am a visual aid kind of a person and I would be frustrated not knowing where things were in relation to each other. So here is a map with currently important landmarks on it.

North Head

Yesterday Zappa went off to help a friend called Rob with the doing-up of his boat (apparently he's been doing it 7 years but the launch date should be in about 6 weeks). On the way (to Rose Bay, see ye mappe), on the ferry, he saw a whale!!! I am so jealous. I looked up Whales at Manly Beach and there was a little site about them, (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~russo/whales/whales.html to credit the pictures to them, what a responsible blogger I am), and the picture sequence of this seemingly attention-seeking whale made me laugh. Like so:

Alex shows his tail

Alex shows off to a ferry

Alex just gets bloody obnoxious about it

 I might have changed the last one. But that's how I read them and it made me laugh.

So. I was on my own for a day, and after lazing around reading a book and cleaning out Jebediah the fish, I thought I should probably do something interesting, so Woody and I went to North Head, a nature reserve type thing with nice views. A guy gave me his parking ticket as he left saving me a sweet $8, and we set off, Woody catching the scent of all sorts of sporting-smelling creatures and getting very excited. Including this bizarrely black rabbit:

 Woody chomping at the bit after seeing said rabbit

 

The views were indeed rather gorgeous:

 

We had a look at different views for a while, then decided we'd had enough and started back. Except I couldn't remember the way back and got sort of lost in the bush. I mean it wasn't proper jungle but I think it definitely counted as bush. I walked through an unmanned spider's web and Woody very nearly ate a huge black specimen of Sydney's fiercely protected water dragons - this picture I took the first time at the Bower but just to illustrate:

That would have been slightly bad... Eventually we made our way back to Dingo and managed to give the all-day ticket to another nice bloke. Yayy. I'm a little concerned cos the ticket inspector guy saw me do it, wrote it down and then went and called someone...hope it's not illegal...

My First Trip to the CITY

Today we went into Sydney Proper on the ferry!

 We took the train to Hyde Park (I think over half the road and place names in Sydney are borrowed from London) to see a bit of Art and About, an annual event in Sydney where art is taken outdoors:
"The idea was to transform our city into a canvas, to create a living gallery on our streets, with work that would make Sydneysiders stop, think, laugh or smile…." (http://www.artandabout.com.au/)

Then we had a brief wander about before settling down to read in the shade of a tree in the park.

After that we started off to find a vegetarian cafe where we'd read there was some live music, couldn't find it, walked for miles, I started collapsing, so we dragged me into a nice bistro type thing and I had the BEST burger and 2 whole cokes and I felt explodingly happy and decided it was the best day EVER. God knows how I'm going to feel tomorrow but I survived and was full of glee.

 We've got a week's ticket for everything - ferries, trains and buses. So we'll hopefully venture in a few more times this week. Now it's time for the RUGBY FINAL! (I've gotten into it). Can't wait - I really like watching the French play cos they're all zip-zip-zip WOO (can't believe Tonga beat them - I wouldn't have thought sheer size would matter that much at a world cup level but hush ma mouth!). And the All-Blacks are just legendary. Should be a good game.

Home and Awaaaay

Guess where we went today?!?!?

Heeheeeeee YAYY we went to the Home and Away beach! It's actually called Palm Beach (very original - especially as there were no palms).

Oh come on, some of you must have watched Home and Away before...

It was sooo lovelyyyy.

We also went to this sort of big calm harboury bit round the corner - OH my goodness I looked around and I just said 'This is where I want to live out of anywhere.' It was so gorgeous, this Caribbean stylee water lapping gently on the beach, you could just swim out to your boat, go off for a jolly sail, come back, walk up to your painted wooden house almost hidden in all the trees around it, on the  steep hills surrounding the water, hang your wet stuff to dry on the verandah, crack open a coke...

Dad what kind of boat is this, below? I was like oo workboat oo not in Cornwall and lack of colourful topsail...

We looked out at it all and I said 'Shit. I need to get a really good job.'
Pause.
'...I don't really want to deal drugs.'
'No. Too risky.'
More silence.
'Well,' said Zappa, with a pained look on his face, 'I could go into business...or some of that accountancy stuff...'
'Oh god no. It's not worth it.'

The only thing we could think of was winning the lottery.

If anyone has any ideas of what we could do with our lives they would be welcome.