{"id":5613,"date":"2014-01-24T07:58:01","date_gmt":"2014-01-24T07:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=5613"},"modified":"2018-08-28T08:46:45","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T22:46:45","slug":"one-trip-every-month-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=5613","title":{"rendered":"One trip EVERY month: January"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marianne at East of M\u00e1laga<\/a> says we take trips at least once a month.\u00a0 Some of us go to countries at the other end of the world and towns on the other side of the continent.\u00a0 But we all leave our dwelling places now and then and, intentionally or not, end up in a park or an orchard or a beach we’ve never been to.\u00a0 Marianne wants to know where we go, where our trips, long and short, take us.<\/p>\n

For Christmas I was given\u00a0The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 9<\/em> and over the past days I’ve read six or seven of the stories.\u00a0 I’ve noticed that, like a good tale, each one builds in tension until there’s a turning point, a part where something bad happens and a solution has to be found.<\/p>\n

My piece of travel writing won’t end up in The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 10; it was just a happy trip to the south coast of NSW, trouble-free from start to finish.\u00a0 Just one day, a short holiday.\u00a0 The only turning point was at our destination, at the end of the afternoon, turning the car homewards.<\/p>\n

We like to take our time, to stop and smell the coffee.\u00a0 So after an hour in the car we typically stop in an old country town, Braidwood, for morning tea.\u00a0 This day, we found many of the caf\u00e9s were closed, the owners away for their summer holidays.\u00a0 But behind the shops of the main street a small bakery-caf\u00e9 was still open, operating in an old rusty-roofed cottage, with some empty tables and chairs outside under the grey dry sky.\u00a0 Under the roof, above the door, out of sight here, some dried bread dough letters form a curious introduction to the bakery: “Fee fi fo fum”.<\/p>\n

\"Dojo
Dojo Bakery, Braidwood, NSW<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From Braidwood we drove up over the misty mountains and down to the sea.\u00a0 Our second stop for the day was at Circuit Beach.\u00a0 Last week you might have seen some photos of my family skipping stones<\/a> here.\u00a0 It was a tricky little bay of a beach, with a multitude of flat stones, trunky gum trees and a small cave.<\/p>\n

\"Tall
Circuit Beach NSW<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If Circuit Beach is good for paddling and stone-throwing, it’s no good for bodysurfing.\u00a0 So we moved on to Malua Bay and found a beach divided: a flagged area for swimming, and a no-go zone for swimmers.\u00a0 My lot said the waves were piddly, and the surfers might have agreed.<\/p>\n

\"No
No swimming. Unless you can dodge surfboards.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Real men need real waves, so we drove on till we found a place with a rugged name, Guerilla Bay, where cliffs were steep and corroded, and grey mounds of rock rose above the sea.\u00a0 But you can’t surf water that’s millpond flat.\u00a0 It was only good for stone-throwing, which I’ve discovered looks great in black and white.<\/p>\n

\"Guerilla
Guerilla Bay NSW<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We hadn’t given up, because there was always the old favourite to fall back on, a beach which deserves its name, Surf Beach.\u00a0 The sun came out for the first time that day, the others went swimming and I sat on the beach photographing them.\u00a0 They’re in the water, far out, where real men surf.\u00a0 And I’m safe on the sand.<\/p>\n

\"Surf
Surf Beach, NSW<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pretty good day, huh?\u00a0 It’s worth the two hours in the car to get there, and another hour driving from beach to beach to beach, and the two hours back again.\u00a0 Back home inland, I laid a few shells on the windowsill to remind me to return to this place of rare pleasure.<\/p>\n

But there was another reminder, at my local shop.\u00a0 They’ve started selling Dojo bread that comes up from Braidwood three times a week.\u00a0 It’s good bread, but I need my strong arm to get the knife through the tough crust.\u00a0 Fee fi fo fum.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marianne at East of M\u00e1laga says we take trips at least once a month.\u00a0 Some of us go to countries at the other end of the world and towns on the other side of the continent.\u00a0 But we all leave our dwelling places now and then and, intentionally or not, end up in a park … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “One trip EVERY month: January”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[565,566,567,7,8,21,568,569,570,270,571,572],"class_list":["post-5613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-photos","tag-beaches-nsw","tag-braidwood","tag-one-trip-every-month","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaday","tag-postaday-2014","tag-south-coast-nsw","tag-travel-nsw","tag-writing","tag-zerotohero","tag-zerotohero-challenge"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5613"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11398,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5613\/revisions\/11398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}