From the Spit to Manly....

After our heritage day on Saturday we decided to take in some different sights of Sydney. This time we emarked on a 10km (6 mile) coastal walk or hike from the Spit Bridge to Manly beach. The guide book came up trumps two days running. I had read that this was supposed to be the best metropolitan walks in the world and I can now see why. It offered the contrast between beautiful views, stunning beaches and the closest things to bushwalking so close the the centre of Sydney. We set off on our bus journey and I was amused at the amount of passengers carrying surboards on the bus..guess it is the norm out here and it was a really nice Sunday morning, I'm guessing they we all heading to Manly. When we arrived half an hour later we were greated with beautiful views and expensive houses. Apparently this is where the uber rich australians live. If you buy a house here you get a mooring point to park your expensive boat, which you obviously must have so that you can avoid the peasants on the over crowded beaches and go to your own secluded little paradise. The guide book told us that along the way we had to look out on the boulders to see the water dragons basking in the sun. We have never seen a water dragon before but we did find this guy in the picture so we are guessing this is what they look like, cute. ALong the way there were lots of amazing views and the path was broken up with many beaches. It was a really nice day and the sun was shining, as we reached the first beach we realised we had hit suburban Sydney with lots of families enjoying a Sunday afternoon picnic or a dip in the water. A much nicer way to spend the weekend than many of the ones we did in London stuck inside working or watching the t.v. Along the way we stpoed to have a look at some of the rock carving believed to have been made when the aborigional settlers lived there.



As you can see from the pictures below it was difficult not to stop every couple of minutes to take in the view.



The great things about the walk though was the fact that it passed through the Sydney Harbour National Park which was fantastic and added a whole different experience to the walk. It took us just over 3 hours to finally arrive at Manly ferry port and as soon as we did we headed for the beach. We were both running towards the water the minute we got there and had a well deserved cool off in the sea. The waves were high so we had lots of fun splashing around. After our dip we laid on the beach for a well earned rest...great way to finish off a spectacular day!




We arrived back at our hostel that evening and got ourselves ready for the tennis...poor Andy Murray.... we would have given anything to see him win as there was a bunch of drunk Aussie men giving us lots of stick all the way through the match...oh well at least my Mum will be pleased, being that she is Rodger Federer's number one fan!