Racing The Train and One Stuck Truck

I can walk to Pinera Railway station from our house in Belair. From the Pinera station platform it takes 15 exhilarating if slightly terrifying minutes by bicycle to arrive 250m lower and slightly less than 4km later on the platform at Lynton, from whence you can cycle (or catch the train) wherever you need to go.

The walk to Pinera Station is steep and mossy.

 

The train takes 18 minutes to clatter the long way round from Pinera to Lynton, stopping at three stations, wandering along the sides of steep rocky gullies, loitering through tunnels, and nodding convivially at passing goods trains. Theoretically I could race down the hill and have 3 minutes to twiddle my thumbs on the Lynton platform before catching the train to town.

About to be fun.

It takes longer when you stop to take photos of the city,

And Glenelg, beside the sea.

Train racing aside, the house on the hill was cold and a couple of days of miserable damp, cloudy weather left us itching to get out as soon as the sun started shining. I didn't race the train down the hill though: instead Roger dropped me at Marion and I had an hour and a bit to meet him somewhere on the Outer Harbor line.  Of course he was on a train and I was on my bicycle but I wasn't racing, not at all. Just riding my bicycle as fast as I could, that was all.

I followed the grandly named Stuart River until it met the Glenelg tram line, and then I followed the tram line for a bit before zipping through a few streets and following the Westside Bike Path. 

 

"I'm catching the 11:18 train" texted Roger, which made me realise I had to pedal harder with no lollygagging around having drinks of water and taking off rain jackets. I arrived at Bowden Station with 5 minutes to spare after a spot of confusion about which platform I should be on and how I could get there (clue: there's a ramp, not my brightest moment if the truth be told).  If I had been racing, which I wasn't, I would have been very chuffed because I beat the train to Bowden.

Spring had sprung all along the Westside Bikeway.

 

A short train ride and one very satisfying lunch later we were on the waterfront at Semaphore where we walked out to the end of the jetty because there was always something to see on the Semaphore jetty.  The tide was out and there were only two crabbers out at the end of the jetty, optimistically setting out crab pots and ignoring the odd seal that turned up to dine out on the crab bait.

 

Lunchtime bicycles.

 

 

I like Semaphore's beautiful old buildings.

Beside the beach at Semaphore.

 

Back on the beachfront I zoomed along on my nice new bicycle, the warm sun and wind at my back, not taking any photos because I'd ridden that way so many times before.  That's not to say that there wasn't entertainment along the way, of course.  Down at the West Beach boat ramp an excavator was busy working to fill dump trucks with sand which was being moved, load by laborious load, south to replenish the beach.  

The sand goes north.

There is an attempt to bring the sand back again.  It's a never-ending job.

 

We watched the trucks for a while, along with several small boys, their mothers, and a collection of elderly gentlemen who shared the small boys' fascination with big machines.  In order to reach the excavator the trucks had to go under the raised driveway to the West Beach boat ramp via a dip in the sand, constructed so that they could fit.  We all watched with bated breath as an unloaded truck barely made it through, spinning its wheels and narrowly escaping being bogged.  

 

 

"Sand carting in progress.  Heavy equipment in use.  Sand may be irregular or soft."  You can still walk along the beach though, just don't get squashed.

No sooner had that excitement ended than another fully loaded truck came along and got confidently bogged under the bridge.  The group of little boys and elderly gentlemen drew a collective breath of delighted dismay as the loaded truck rocked back and forth, swiveled to and fro, spun its wheels, and got more and more bogged.

Along came the excavator, abandoning its truck-filling duties to rescue the truck, this being complicated by the truck being under the bridge.  The excavator extended its bucket and pushed, the truck revved and inched forward.  For every inch the truck moved, the excavator had to edge further under the bridge.  It was all very exciting for those of us watching the show. Would the truck get free?  Would the excavator get stuck instead? What would happen when the tide came in?  The small boys cheered as, with a triumphant roar of engines, the truck pulled free and rumbled off to dump its load. 

 

 

 

 The excavator, to the dismay of several small boys and possibly some older gentlemen as well, extricated itself from under the bridge and ambled back to filling trucks.  Trucks which still had to fit under the bridge, mind you, but we didn't stop to watch the dance of stuck trucks and pushing excavators fighting a losing battle against the relentless work of wind and water. Instead we kept on down the coast until we reached the end of the bike path, and then we put the bikes on the car and went home, exhausted from all the excitement.

Home.  This tree is seasonally confused.