Not Eating Ice Cream At The Beach

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Back when we first arrived in Adelaide we sniggered at all the Adelaideans who rushed to the beach and donned their bikinis and budgie smugglers at the first hint of a sunny day and a temperature above 20C. As it turns out we may be more acclimatised than we had thought, because what did we do on the first sunny day of (almost) summer but rush off to the beach to enjoy the sunshine, even if we weren't going to traumatise the public by wearing bikinis or budgie smugglers.

I had worn my legs out walking all around Belair NP as well as clocking up in excess of my goal of 200km on my bike for the month, so on a sunny Saturday Roger took off to zoom down the hill by himself.  I followed by car a sedate couple of hours later, to go paddling at the beach and then meet him for an ice-cream at Glenelg.

I went for a walk on the beach.
 

A large number of Adelaide's denizens shared the gentle and family-friendly beach with me. Toddlers littered the waterline and small children dug holes, fell in holes, filled up holes, and splashed about in the little waves that sloshed into shore. 

Mobs of them.

One lone seagull braved the shallows.
 

Inexpert paddle-boarders paraded wonkily close to shore, dodging (or sometimes not dodging) equally inexpert sea kayakers. Lovers held hands and paddled, or kissed and cuddled on paddle-boards as they bobbed along in shallow waters  Every so often a tinnie pulled in to shore and loaded or unloaded a group of hopeful fishermen before buzzing back out to sea, somehow without running over any paddle-boarders or kayakers. 

Watch out for fishermen in tinnies.

Whaddya reckon guys?  Can we fit anyone else in our tinnie?

 

Suburbs of sun shelters sprouted on the dry sand above high tide, while beside them sun-bakers glistened with sunscreen and tanning oil, periodically rolling over to ensure an even basting.  In amongst it all dogs fetched balls, fathers threw water balls, children were lost and found again, and a little boy threw a tantrum because he couldn't stop the sea from nibbling at his sand castle. Even the seagulls had ceded the beach to humanity for the day and taken themselves off to more distant beaches.

Seagull refuge of last resort.
 

I walked from Brighton to Seaford and back again, taking photos which had to be carefully framed so as not to offend the sensibilities of any beach goers who might wander into the picture and not wish to be there.  I got back to the car just as Roger arrived.

"It's madness at Glenelg," he said. "The streets are clogged with cars looking for a park and there's people everywhere."

We thought about this for a second. After all, we are WhileNotWorking, which means we have the option of eating ice cream at Glenelg on a weekday when everyone else is tediously occupied at offices and schools. As if we needed any more convincing, the sun slid behind a bank of clouds that rolled in from the west and all the warmth of the evening went away.

Going...

Gone! Where's my jacket?

Gratuitous beach/cloud photo #1

Gratuitous beach/cloud photo #2.  More clouds, less sun, the day becoming less compatible with eating ice cream.
 

"Let's just go home," we said, like the wild party people that we are.

So we did.

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