Had a wonderful day at the ...... beach

At 7:30 this morning we started our adventure - setting of to the coast - a 2 and half hour car trip to the township of Batemans Bay (on the south east coast of Australia).  Mid way into the trip we stopped for pastries and a cup of tea at Braidwood (the best bakery ever).  At this point my husband took over the driving.  When we arrived at the coast it was very grey and cloudy (as you can see in the photo) but still quite warm.   As the tide was out we took a romantic walk along the beach (which was covered in seaweed - which had quite a strong smell).  It wasn't a beach that I would swim in - not that I swam at all today in case you were wondering - the water is in fact quite cool and doesn't warm up until March - strange...

This is a photo of my husband (who doesn't like having his photo taken!!).  Notice all the gum trees along the edge of the beach - with erosion the trees are falling over and dying. As we turned the corner of the bay we found this unusual rock formation with 3 large water birds sitting at the top. It looked quite beautiful in a strange way - rather Gothic.

In search of lunch we drove along the coast (during which time the clouds had almost disappeared to reveal a sunny blue sky), arriving at Manula Bay which was very pretty and the beach had no seaweed.

This was perfect - so we ordered lunch (fish and chips) and ate it on the grassy area in front of the sand.  Below is a picture my husband eating his lunch.  There isn't any photos of me as I looked like a wild woman with my hair blowing everywhere.!! 

After lunch we went for another romantic walk along the rocks and found this beautiful water hole that was crystal clear.  The cliffs around this area were very dark, almost black and rocks we were walking on were very rough (falling wasn't an option!!).  Waves crashing on the rock - I took a wholes series of waves crashing - but I won't bore you with them:)

By mid afternoon we were ready to go home - this is a photo out of the front window of the car - to get home we had to wind through the Clyde Mountain which is very streep and windy (not so good for a girl who suffers from motion sickness - but I did so well and didn't feel sick once).

I took 110 photos today - some are quite arty and need to be 'fixed' in photoshop - you might see a couple over the next few weeks!!  Otherwise they are in my Deviantart.com account.