Weekend with Martin and Jenny

We spent our last weekend in Sydney with Martin and Jenny. Jenny is Bronwyns (my dads cousin) daughter, she kindly offered to show us a few things around Sydney after Bronwyn became ill and was unable to meet up with us.

Martin and Jenny were appaulled when they learned how lazy we had been whilst in Sydney, we thought we had done quite a bit of sight seeing but apparently we hadn't done enough. To be fair though we had been enjoying staying in one place for a reasonable length of time - a small pleasure after spending one night here, three nights there etc. Anyway after giving us a huge kick up the bum, they put us on the ferry to Manly beach and we spent the afternoon there.

Manly beach was lovely, apparently its the more upmarket Bondi/less touristy. We walked along by the shops and Alan bought his 2nd pair of sunnies (which if you include the pair he bought with him, it makes a total of 3 pairs for this tour). We also got a boost smoothie and armed with a map (courtesy of Martin) we headed off to do a short-ish walk (6km). We got lost! and ended up in some residential estate (nice houses) and then had to cut through some rather thick bush to get back. I sent Alan first so he could meet any big spiders first.

When we met back up with Jenny and Martin in the city, they took us for a walk across the Sydney Harbour bridge. It was approx 3.5km round trip so we rewarded ourselves with a pint, as in total we had walked about 10km (6.2 miles). Little did we know that this was just a warm up.

On Sunday, Jenny told us that we were going for a little walk in the Royal National park. How little we asked? 20km was the answer, but it was ok because it was fairly flat all the way with a little hill at the end. Ok we thought, we've done 10km, we'll give it a go.
It began with a little train ride and then a trip on a boat across to the national park. We walked up a hill and around another residential estate (approx 1.5-2km) and then we got to the start point which said NSW coastal walk 23.5km. We were horrified as this was already 5km longer than anticipated, but Jenny said it was flat.
The views were stunning from the cliff tops and were saw several migrating whales, but the walk itself was far from flat unless you count going up and down rugged cliff terrain flat. After 5hrs my cheerfull and positive nature wasn't quite so cheerfull and positive anymore, and I had enormous blisters and a huge bottom lip which was slowing me down. We walked about 20km as half way through the walk it was obvious we wouldn't finish until after dark and we weren't prepared for that, so we turned around and headed back. A good day was had by all though and we were happily exhausted when we went out for dinner later.