Thursday 8 Feb: Ups and downs in Kiama

Author: Mr A

Location: Kiama and surrounds

I guess the clue should have been in the name, Kiama Downs. As we set off on our bikes along the coast, hill after near vertical hill seemed to be in our immediate future. But the views were fantastic! We could see miles along the coast on this beautiful summer’s day. A trifle warm for hilly riding at 30 degrees but a lovely north-easterly breeze was blowing in our faces. There’s nothing quite like riding a bike to bring a smile to your face…well going downhill anyway.We managed to miss our turn off to stay on a cycleway, and ended up on main road for a bit, then found it again and cruised into our destination of Minnamurra. This turned out to be a sleepy little village, with a one platform railway station on the South NSW line. We found the only cafe and ordered some much needed sustenance. One Chicken Club and a Chicken Caesar Salad demolished. Time for the return match. My eagle eyed Map Girl saw a faint footpath line on Google so we headed for that and followed a fabulous path right along the cliff tops.A few more hills and we were soon back in Kiama, with an ice creamery seeming to jump into our path. Wow that went down well. Mrs A with her mango sorbet and me with some English toffee ice cream. Just bliss. 20km ticked off and 1000 calories consumed!Back at the Zone, Tassie seemed to greet us rather grumpily, after all she only just had a 4 hour nap, apparently not quite enough.Dinner tonight was Cambodian fish amok. We both loved the food when we visited the country and Mrs A has added a couple of cracking dishes from their cuisine into her extensive repertoire. The fresh veggies from the farmers market yesterday just added to the flavours.

While I’m on the subject of food (I’m barely off it in this post am I?) we have decided to experiment with using the car fridge as freezer to give us more storage space. It’s working fine when we are on power in a park, but off the grid I don’t see it as feasible unless you have a bank of solar panels and add a third battery somewhere in the already tightly packed Cruiser. I ran the car fridge off power the first day and it was pretty much drained after about 17hrs – which is about normal given the draw of a freezer. We do have a solar blanket (small flexible panels mounted on a foldable backing) but I’ve never seen it pump in more than 2.3 Amps to the batteries even in full sun, so it should extend the time a little but won’t keep up with the drain. It’s a early model from Kimberley Kampers. Enough said. Apart from this all our set up is pretty much the same as on our last trip.