Friday, May 30, 2014

Dinner at Clare 24th May 2014

Panchos at Clare for a fun night of pizza and wine.






Dinner at Spalding 3rd May 2014

Carol Matters, the owner of the Country Bakehouse at Spalding, snapped us relaxing after the walk and published this photo on Facebook.


After drinks and nibbles, it was across the road to the Barbed Wire Hotel for dinner.

All these photos are courtesy of Robert Alcock.









Thursday, May 29, 2014

Day 29: EE George Road quarry to Hallett

Sunday 25th May 2014:

The weekend's theme was "stone" and today, this did not augur well for Neville Haar.  His recent shows of speed were penalised and his handicap was increased by a stone, to be carried in his pack.





Dean's flag for the day is a little cryptic and very well researched: £14 ( i.e. a stone in the old imperial units of weight).  But the note and coins adding up to the £14 are English as we discarded that currency nearly 50 years ago, and I don't think we ever had a £2 coin.





The morning briefing saw Morris Minus being scandalously awarded to Robert Alcock for his meritorious act.  Robert drove to collect Coral and Judith after they went back to find MM, whom they had lost.  Big deal!  Obviously losing the E2E-1 mascot is a hugely notorious incident, and one without parallel in the history of the Friends.  On any other day, such an infamous occurrence would have seen the perpetrators awarded MM for the rest of the year.  However, by implacably exercising their casting vote in the face of overwhelming opinion, Coral and Judith avoided the further notoriety of carrying the monkey on their packs on consecutive days.




Then it was off to Hallett, with the wind farm always visible and sometimes audible, even from several kilometres away.  Some open country to walk today, but then lots of road walking later.  A cloudy but fine day, we walked 19.8 km, a good part of that on dirt road.




Cathy Kelly and Jane Haar have a chat while waiting to re-group.







Morning tea was on the side of a road.


I don't think they had this in mind when they planted it.


Some very different interpretations of the "stone" theme:

Margaret Schmidtke wore her stones

Michael Middelton took a stone age view of things


Lunch was on the side of another road.



As we approached Hallett, the silo had been clearly visible from quite a distance.  The other smaller buildings were not as prominent, but spoke of the past importance of the railway at Hallett.



Only a couple of hundred metres to go to our cars parked across the road behind the old railway station.




Day 28: Marble Hill Road to EE George Road quarry

Saturday 24th May 2014:

The morning briefing brought a few chuckles as a set of lost keys was paraded.



Yes, they are my keys.


Morris Minus was awarded jointly to Coral Campbell and Judith Rushton for notoriously walking on the bitumen road into Spalding, thereby missing a section of the trail on their catch up, and so having to repeat that section in the morning.


The theme for the weekend was "Stone" due to the number of stone walls built as fencing in this area. Dean's flag was Stone - the 1974 classic Aussie film.  Jane Haar and Mary Cartland also carried their interpretations of the theme.





Then it was off to enjoy the countryside, climb some hills, take in the views and find some stone walls.


















Morning tea was on the hillside, enjoying the lovely views.





Later on, lunch was on the side of Hacklins Corner road. The views were pleasant, but less expansive than at morning tea.



Our next stop was the Whistling water tank.



Then it off towards the Hallett wind farm.







We finished at the quarry on EE George Road, walking a total of 21.2 km for the day.  It was only now that Coral and Judith noticed Morris Minus was missing.  A review of the day narrowed down the search to the last 3.5 km after lunch, so the ladies went back to search for MM.

Fortunately, Morris Minus was found by Coral and Judith, much to the delight of Dean.  Robert Alcock took these great photos of the triumphant return of MM and the big smiles all round.