Day 2 - Fill up your wineglass

Day 2 - Saturday 26th March

Ged rose early for a run around St Helens. It turns out it was just her, a few cows and a beautiful sunrise over the Tasman. Had a nice cooked brekky and headed south.

Early morning run

Just Ged and the cows

We followed the coast down through Bicheno and Coles Bay.  The coastline was rugged and beautiful,  a mix of ocean,  bays,  rocky outcrops and inlets.  Whilst beautiful  to our left,  we were horrified at how dry it was on our right.  Tassie has had its driest winter,  spring and summer in recent memory.  What would normally be rolling green fields were dusty,  brown and unforgiving.

We drove through Coles Bay and into the Wineglass car park,  looking for the booth to buy our National Park day pass.  We finally found a ranger and got the wallet ready.  He seemed such a nice man. He explained that there was no booth,  but gave us a pass anyway.  Hang on - that wasn't a pass!  It was an infringement notice! It seemed we should have deviated miles back at a parks centre.  Never mind.  We parked the car and headed for the track up to the lookout.  The brochure said this was an easy walk.  Easy for some maybe like Ged) but much less so for Steve. There were hundreds of steps and steep ones at that.  After 25 minutes and a few rest beaks,  we made it.

Wow!

It was a warm cloudless day and the view was spectacular.  We'll let the photos speak for themselves.

The decent was just as challenging, but we made it back to the car and ventured off to buy our day ticket.  They took our money and ripped up the infringement.  Phew.

We left Freycinet and headed to Swansea via a place called devil's corner. This was a new and very cool pizzaria, winery and lookout in the middle of nowhere. We stopped for a wine on the balcony andd left with some lovely local wine.

There was one more detour - to Dolphin Sands,  a gorgeous strip of sand behind nine miles of beach.  We drove to the end and took a long walk along the inlet and surf beach.  Ged loved it.  Maybe a place to come back to one day.

We headed to Swansea,  checked in,  had a couple of wines and headed to the RSL,  the only gig in town.

The RSL was straight out of the 60s.  Had great service,  a great meal (Steve loved the scallops,  but had to share) and headed back to the hotel,  checked out the route for Ged's run in the morning and had a good sleep.