Today we only had 30km to cycle to Port Macquarie.  We packed up and left the caravan park after chatting to the cleaner who has cycled most of the east coast of Australia, much of NZ and used to live in Wanaka.  He told Will about the road north and discussed the route we’d taken.  Will was pleased he also thought the road south of Forster is dangerous.

The road from North Haven to Port Macquarie was mostly OK although it was very bumpy with a degraded edge and lots of smashed bottles.  A man outside the supermarket yesterday told Jen to be careful on this road as there had been bad feelings between motorists and cyclists training for the recent Port Macquarie Ironman.  We can see both sides as cyclists on road bikes would have real difficulty on the bumpy edges with glass and so would cycle in the left tire marks of cars causing friction.  We had no problems with cars and everyone gave us lots of room.  Will pondered whether the local councillors and roading people had ever biked this road and seen the state of the seal or the amount of glass.

We arrived in Port Macquarie and cycled through the surprisingly hilly suburbs to the nice downtown waterside Caravan Park.  We arrived not long after 11am and decided to treat ourselves with a cabin.  It’s great arriving that early as we checked in then sat on the deck in the sun and had lunch.  Later we went for a walk around the pretty CBD of Port Macquarie then had a beer at the lively Beach House Bar on the waterfront.  There was an acoustic musician playing with lots of people sitting on the grassy foreshore listening to the music and relaxing on the sunny Saturday afternoon.

Later we did a big heap of grocery shopping and went back to the cabin where we again sat on the deck and watched the sun set.  Hundreds of parrots then flew in and landed in the trees and roof of the cabin.  They squawked, played, fought and made lots of noise.  Then just on sunset, they all flew away.  We spent the evening watching the Lions vs Australia rugby match.

We plan to have a few days off here before heading north.  The last few days seem like a blur of biking, eating and sleeping and making progress north.  It’ll be nice to relax in Port Macquarie knowing we are ahead of schedule, not that we really have a schedule.

Highlight of today:  Port Macquarie on a relaxed Saturday afternoon.

Lunching on the cabin deck

Port Macquarie

Grand old cinema in Port Macquarie

Later on the deck again.

Sunset