Thursday Walking 10 16

Today went mostly to plan. I started early, 7.30 ( to beat the commuter rush) ,  and caught a tram into near the city and changed to a bus to go westwards to Garden City, part of Port Melbourne.  As near as I could get to Sandridge Lookout, the western part of the bay and as far as you get without getting mixed up in stacks and stacks of containers. On the map there was a cafe and a few other shops at Garden City. The best I could do for breakfast was a sausage roll.  I then walked to Sandridge Lookout. It was a specially built tower that had a ramp up to the equivalent of the 2nd floor of a house and a tall structure above, which I think was just meant to be decorative. However, it was very very windy and there was a horribly loud and eerie noise coming from the tower I talked to a fisherman , or more accurately shouted with a fisherman. He said he had never heard  it as bad as today.. I did not linger, but started walking back towards Melbourne. There were no other people and the fisherman was going to leave.

I walked as close as I could get to the sand around the bay, past the wharves, big new apartment blocks of Port Melbourne and stopped at a lovely place which made up for the lack of choice I had at breakfast. Most of their cakes were gluten free, some low in sugar, they had gf crepes, good gf bread etc  I sat for quite a while savouring a raspberry friand-like little cake.  Then along the beach of middle Park, some quite modest little houses at the Port Melbourne end , then along the beach of Middle Park to the edge of St kilda, where I had started to walk eastwards from on Tuesday 30 Sept. It was interesting  looking at the variety of houses, apartment blocks, large old hotels, , almost empty beaches, and just watching the water . I walked back here along different  back streets, stopping for an omelette  for lunch at a little place near the Alfred Hospital. By the time i got back here I had walked a bit over 15 km. The downside of being quite relaxed is that in a total of 3 stops and 2.5 hours  I could only get 3/4 of the crossword ( guardian cryptic) out. There is a new on tomorrow.