On shore, there was a belated lunch that wasn’t going to provide material for a homeward bound epistle, but fulfilled the required purpose quite adequately. Sometimes it’s good to get away from the gourmet end of the scale.
That, however, didn't last once Ido the bus driver conducted a straw poll to identify any oyster lovers on board. There were several of us, enough to justify a brief diversion into Get Shucked. I was inclined to be conservative, having been in a good paddock over the preceding couple of days and having just had lunch, so I limited myself to half a dozen ($8, thank you very much). It was a decision I regretted as soon as they were gone as Ido started making time to get moving noises.
According to the Get Shucked web site oysters are the only food that won’t cause indigestion, but I reckon with enough time to have a decent go at their product I could go close. If we’re ever back that way the first dozen will be a small scale starter.
We could probably have lingered longer, but one assumes there are issues with ensuring the bus actually gets onto the right ferry so the Hobart bound passengers can arrive back more or less on schedule.
Once we’d made the return crossing and disembarked at the car park in Kettering we were off to Kingston Beach, where we anticipated a degree of difficulty in locating the night’s accommodation. We’d just made the turn off towards Kingston Beach, where we expected to find a street map or something when Madam spotted Church Street on the right hand side. We were past it before we could turn, so it was a case of heading on to somewhere we could crack the old U-turn and backtracking.
When we arrived, we found The Apartments on Church Street isn’t quite as grandiose an establishment as the title might suggest, being basically a couple of regulation flats geared for night by night rather than weekly rental, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the place apart from the lack of a drier in the laundry.
Having been on the road for a week, there were laundry issues that needed attending to and that needed to be done before dinner, which was fine with me. No drier, however, meant the clothes line came into play, with associated question marks about whether what got hung out would be dry in the morning.
As it turned out, it wasn’t.
But with the laundry on the line it was a case of heading down to the beach for dinner, which came in the form of a lamb shank and mash for Hughesy, and a seafood chowder for the driver at the local hostelry. A couple of draught beers went down quite well, and while the meals weren’t going to prompt homeward correspondence the shank was perfectly acceptable. Madam wasn’t entirely satisfied with the chowder, but at the price it was adequate...
And so, with dinner done for it was off to bed, via Clochemerle.