Date & Time of Departure: 24th February 2008 8:18am
Duration of travel: 3hrs 52 minutes
Time of Arrival (back home): ~6pm
Distance travelled: 202km
Fuel Consumption: 8.9l/100km
Song playing at departure: Bad Day by the Chipmunks (Alvin and the Chipmunks The Movie Soundtrack)
This write up is long overdue, and has been asked about for too long for me to put off any longer. Road trip #2 came about when I said, "Let's go pick some strawberries". This quickly turned into a full day's trip encompassing a winding trip up to Arthur's Seat, a tiring trek through a few mazes, late lunch, and finally a scary, harrowing (for me) climb down some creaky boardwalks at Cape Schanck.
So, we headed off at a little past 8 in the morning after our friends, Don and Winnie arrived in their car. It was drizzling as we left, and the skies were overcast. We arrived at the Dromana Visitor Information Centre, where I grabbed a whole heap of brochures about the area around Mornington Peninsula. The rain had stopped by now, so we crossed the road from the centra and decided to have a look at the sea.
The beach was lined with little colourful cabins which I initially thought were there for people to change into their swimmers, but to my surprise a little bit of rowdy laughter from Don and the kids resulted of one of the doors of one of the cabins swinging open to reveal that someone was actually living inside! I do not know if that was true of all the cabins, but we didn't go knocking to find out. The wind was not too strong, but after standing around for a bit, we felt it was time to head to Arthur's Seat and our breakfast.
So we stomped our shoes and got back into our cars, and after a few wrong turns, and harrowing moments when we encountered unsealed roads, which Don's porsche was unable to travel on (not without breaking stabbing his heart at every moment, anyway), we finally made it onto the right road to travel up to
Arthur's Seat. The winding road had me gripping the seats as Jeffrey made twists and turns at a speed much faster then I would have gone up in (a snail's pace). We stopped midway up the "hill" to take some pictures of the view at Chapman's Point. I must say, the view is much more breath taking then my amateur photography can encompass.
After making our way to the top, we sat on one of the picnic tables and munched away on our sandwiches, Roti Kaya for the adults, Cheese Sandwiches for the kids. The Arthur's Seat Chairlift remained closed, and although the operators had hoped to reopen them late last year, no plans have yet been made to repair the doomed ride. I myself would pass on this flimsy looking seat suspended over such heights, even though the ride would afford breath taking sights. With our light meal over with, and a quick stop to the restrooms, we headed back down towards our strawberry picking session at
Sunny Ridge.
Its been quite a few years since we went down to
Sunny Ridge Strawberry Farm. The last time we went, my oldest was my only child, and he was about 2 years old. I remembered the rows upon rows of strawberry plants overflowing with big ripe berries, and that we were told we could eat as much as we liked, as long as we either bought a minimum amount of strawberries each (which I couldn't remember how much now), or we paid an entrance fee. I had all these images in my memories of Gabrial running along the rows plucking handfuls of strawberries for a while, until he grew tired and just laid next to a row of plants and just grabbed the nearest strawberries to eat.
Upon arriving at Sunny Ridge, I discovered it had changed a little. Groups of families were huddled inside the cafe area eating their strawberries out of little plastic containers, presumably from having just finished collecting them. Upon enquiry, I was politely told that I could eat the strawberries off the plants, but they highly recommend that we put them into our containers and after weighing and paying for any excess not included in the "picking entry" price, we could then sit down and eat them after first washing them. I was a little disappointed in this, but since we had made the trip, we finally decided that I would take the 3 children into the picking area while Jeffrey sat waiting with the others.
The kids excitedly grabbed their little containers, and we headed into the back farm area. Rows upon rows of greens awaited us. The strawberries were in hiding, or else had already been picked off by the earlier arrivals, but we soon found some nice looking ones. The 2 boys headed off by themselves, while Kaitlyn walked ahead of me, excitedly picking little red berries which seemed to burst in her fingers. She was also excited to find "green berries", since her favourite colour was green.
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It started to drizzle not long after we started our tiring chore. It wasn't easy bending to search for nice ripe strawberries amid the green foliage, especially when the pathways were slippery with mud. After 15 minutes of walking up and down the rows, Xander and Kaitlyn gave up looking and waited at the side for me to fill their containers. No way was I living without getting out weight's worth of strawberries!! It took me quite a bit of time to fill each of the kid's 250g containers, and i was aiming for slightly more then my 500g one but was disappointed to find upon exiting that all my hardwork amounted to just 100g over my 500g minimum. A quick wash up of the strawberries, and a change of clothes for Kaitlyn (she had fallen down onto a puddle), and once we had cleaned the shoes, we hopped into the car for our next stop. The
Ashcombe Maze and Lavender Gardens.
There were 2 Hedge Mazes, a circular Rose Maze, a Lavender Maze and a alot of gardens, water features and trees, trees and more trees. We headed into the hedge mazes first, and it started to warm us up even thought the drizzle was still falling on and off. With the kids running ahead, we had to jog to keep up or lose them in the many turns and possible routes. It was with great relief we came to the end of the maze and into one of the water gardens. The tight growing hedges were a bit claustrophobic, and with images of crazed clowns holding chainsaws in my mind, I was glad to be out of the maze.
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The kids had been given a little clipboard and pencil at the entrance to hunt Gnomes and Faeries inside the area, and once we had finished the 2 hedge mazes, we started to hunt them down. They were little gnomes and faeries tied to trees with a red board next to them with their names on it. All the kids had to do was hunt them down and write down their names. Simple? Not! We spent a lot of time wondering about looking for them, and here were some that we found, as well as pictures of some of the gardens, and ornaments littered about the 25 acres of lush greenery.
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The Rose Garden was just a circular iron maze which just leads to a special center area with seats. All along the path were roses, roses and more roses, all with beautiful aromas and deadly thorns. There were more then 1200 bushes of roses, with 217 varieties. It was a little scary though, especially with Kaitlyn tearing through with not a thought or care that the thorns might scar her pretty little face for life. I had enough heart dropping moments to counter her cavalier behavior. I don't foresee a return trip to see anymore roses.
By the time we got to the Lavender Maze, we were pretty tired, and a little hungry as we had done a lot of walking, sustained only by our earlier sandwiches. The lavender maze didn't seem to be growing in abundance, possibly because it was not flowering season? We walked about it for a bit but soon resorted to blatant cheating to get to the middle!
After the maze, we wandered about a bit trying to complete the gnome hunt as well as the faeries, which we had yet to spot. We didn't go very far as we were all hungry by now. It was after 2pm and the fresh air and exercise had taken its toll. Don "collapsed" on the ground and Kaitlyn attempted to "shock" him with her fake electric paddles. She kept shouting "CLEAR!" and rubbing her palms, then placing her palms on his body.
After a quick laugh and a rest, we headed towards the exit. The kids had only found half the gnomes and 2 faeries, but they each got a lolly for their effort. We got back into the cars, and headed down to the coast to find a bbq pit to have our lunch.
We drove down to Shoreham and went past a few crowded beaches full of surfers. Eventually, we came upon a quiet semi deserted bbq area with children's playground. There was a fantastic view, free clean electric bbq, and a nice picnic table area. We soon had the sausages and burgers sizzling on the hotplates, while the kids ran about and played. In our food deprived state, we only had thoughts for food, and no one even thought of taking any pictures until we had fully stuffed our tummies full. After we had polished off most of the food and cleaned up, we had a look around at the beautiful surroundings. Nice and peaceful, but it was getting late, so we left for our final destination.
Our last stop for the day,
Cape Schanck, is famous for its Lighthouse. This day however, we weren't actually going to the lighthouse, but rather to the edges to have a look at the beautiful view of the sea. We parked our cars and walked to several lookout points to enjoy the views. Although the wind was strong, the hike along the cliffs were sufficient enough to keep us warmed. When we got to the boardwalk, everyone was happy to walk ahead, but I was stuck to take slow careful steps down the creaky boards, clutching the sides. The strong wind did not help, and I constantly felt like I was about to be blown away. I had never like wooden boards or bridges, and it took me a while to make it to the halfway point on trembling legs. The view was definitely worth enduring the harrowing climb down and the laughter of everyone else as they watched my descent. After spending a few moments savoring the view, we headed back up towards the car. The climb up was definitely more tiring then the way down of course, but a little less frightening.
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It had been a long journey, and by the late hour we reached home, we decided to end our little road trip with Pizza and strawberries. As it was Eugene's birthday, we had a little fruit cake to celebrate. It was a simple affair, but we were all tired out from the long day and had an early night.
