Right, now where was I.....? Thats right, I woke in my 5 star Youth Hostel with sun deck and seaviews, ready to tackle the final part of the Great Ocean Road towards Melbourne, via Queenscliffe which is where I have my final Youth Hostel before I head on to Tasmania.
Now I may have mentioned this before, but I have Taff and I travelled this road many years ago, but we raced to see London Bridge and The Apostles before dark, and then had to head on to Lorne (which I will be visiting on my way) and that is a fairly long way from the Apostles! We did not know that then, but I have hindsight now so that is why I am taking 4 days!
So off I headed. All I can say is now I know why we were so bloody scared driving this road in the dark!! These stupidly ridiculously windy roads carve their way through the cliffs in some places and cling to the side of them in others. They swoop down into valleys with hairpin turns and climb back up them steeply and sharply, with sheer cliffs either sidef, one going up and one going down into the crashing surf below that you can hear roar through the car window (saving petrol so no air con...)This continues for over 40km! Terrifying at times but bloody great fun! I can see a Top Gear Challenge! You have cars and caravans coming towards you too, with lorries too, and there are several laybys but they are very
annoyingly on the opposite side of the road, but with some careful driving you can do it!!
After many little coves and river inlets I turned a corner to be faced with Lorne and a smile came to my face. This little seaside town is all grown up! Its now a really bustling surfing seaside town with hotels and restaurants serving all sorts. The Lorne Motor Inn has now been swallowed up into a lovely new hotel but I could still recognise where it had been, even though it was dark when I was here all those years ago!
So after a mooch about, purchasing an obligatory fridge magnet, and watching the white cockatoos begging for food like pigeons, I bid farewell to this lovely town and headed onto my next stop. I passed many little towns, a lot of them in this area named after Uk towns and cities, I pulled in a couple more times for wee and coffee breaks and then had fish and chips in Torquay! The weather was beginning to turn at this point, bit chilly and the clouds looked like they contained plenty of rain (a sign of things to come!)
There was a town called Geelong on the way that looked worth a visit but I decided to wait until the morning as I was only looking at 60miles to Port Melbourne for my ferry. After a day of thrilling ups and downs and corned beef legs (said it was getting colder.....) I arrived in Queenscliffe.
Quite a picturesque little seaside town, if not a little bleak, but that had plenty to do with the weather!
My Hostel turned out to be an old Victorian Guest House with wooden floorboards, lots of oak furniture and a homely, English B&B feel (a musty Fawlty Towers.......) I was given my room, a quaint little single at back, the showers were shared (my OCD again....) but they were new and very clean so I was
put at ease! No wi fi as promised so I decided to head out to explore and see if I could find some. No
luck on both counts, it was after 5 and all was shut up for the night. Hey ho I would just have a little explore and see what this little town had to offer. The answer was like most seaside towns in bad weather - not a lot!!! I did find the harbour (they are at the mouth of the bay that has Melbourne at the top) and the mouth is quire narrow. There is a ferry that can take you to the opposite shore, Sorrento, and then you can drive to Melbourne from that side, so I though that may be something different for my trip tomorrow.
Until I got to the harbour. By this time the wind had picked up just a tad and the sky was looking a bit more grim making the boats clang against the jetty so I ducked into one of the little food places that were there. Well, that was 5.30pm, and just for coffee, and I left at 9pm after coffee, wine, food, cake, chatting to the wonderful chef (who turned out to be a bit of a celebrity chef, I found that out when I got back to the hostal and saw his face on a magazine!!) and watching the sky darken and the wind whip up a storm!
It really was a great place and I plumped for the local seafood gumbo, and it was lush!! Packed with fish and soooooo tasty! I loved it so much I asked the chef for the receipe and he gave it to me!!! Told me to cook it with love (in a very sexy accent!!) and off I toddled back to bed. I sat in the lounge for a bit reading, listening to the old pub sign squeeking in the wind as it almost swung off its hinges! My room being at the top of the house meant that I fell asleep listening to the wind, and now the rain, that was lashing down! Just like being at home! I fell asleep hoping that the weather would improve for my overnight ferry crossing to Tas tomorrow night.........
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