On Thursday evening, Grimace and I made a snap decision to run the family away to the beach for the weekend. I won’t say we were desperate for a weekend adventure, but come friday afternoon, we happily made our way to Manly. Despite battling the peak-hour roads, we arrived relaxed and ready to enjoy the weekend. Of course, things were helped with a glass of wine, watching the sun drop and the full moon rise.

We woke up to a lovely Saturday morning, and as a family we made a list of things to do:

– sleep in and relax (the irony was not lost on me that this request came from Giggles Magoo, who’d been awake since the crack of dawn)

– Beach time

– A visit to the zoo

– Picnic dinner by the water, watching the sun set for the day.

With our list in hand, we headed off for an adventurous day. You’ll see from the pics below, we were pretty good at ticking off the list:

What I forgot to mention about our choice of beach to watch the sunset; it just so happened to be a nude beach… certainly a new experience for us and the unfortunate souls that were there, just trying to have a relax… announced with naive delight: “yep, Dad, it’s a nudie beach… that old man over there has no underpants on. Why is he walking around with no clothes”. Oops, parent fail. Needless to say, as soon as dinner was finished and the sun was set, we made our way back to the car, leaving the poor unsuspecting nudist colony to their own, de-robed space.

Sunday morning I was up early with dreams of catching the sunrise over North Head. And wow, getting up early never fails to satisfy:

Sneaking in this little run made my heart super happy and unburdened. The beauty of the run is quite often what you discover about yourself. And on this beautiful Sunday morning, I realised how lovely it is to belong outdoors.

When I made it back to the family, we were all excited to hit the beach again, and there was a request to factor in a ferry ride. We opted to take the ferry from Manly to Watson’s Bay, for a swim at Camp Cove. Talk about a magnificent view! After some famous Doyle’s Fish, Chips and ice cream, we hopped the ferry from Watson’s Bay across to the Q station, for a 5km bush and beach back to Little Manly.

We returned to the Mountains Sunday evening, sun soaked and very happy we’d remembered it’s ok to run away sometimes.