Relaxing at Refugio

Monday 25th November

We finally cracked it! A lovely motel and peace and quiet throughout the night.  Apart from a rotten sore throat....perfect.

After a very civilised free breakfast we drove down 101 to the coast and parked at Refugio State beach. By the time we got there the temperature was up to the high 60's and the sky was beautiful Californian blue. This is a really lovely beach with sea like a mill pond, far reaching golden sand and palm trees along the shoreline. Apart from looking very attractive the palm trees made a very convenient slack lining location!

We spent an hour or so wasting our time on this pointless pastime.  It was harder today because the trees were further apart and this meant that the middle of the line had more wobble.  For some reason my balance on my left foot is much better than the right so I practised until I could get onto the line from either side and then eventually I managed to travel the whole length of the line - 15 steps which was a huge breakthrough for me.

We had both made progress but were getting rather warm and a bit tired so we decided to quit whilst we were ahead and move onto the beach. The sea was absolutely perfect, slightly cooler than 20 miles further south at Santa Barbara but fine once you got used to it and great for swimming.  After we got out we decided we needed to move because there was a gentle breeze which made it just slightly too cool to be comfortable. We walked to the end of the beach, did a bit of rock climbing and found a lovely sheltered little cove where we settled down to relax for a few hours. It was just what I needed, my energy levels were low and I was feeling decidedly under par.  Unusually Martin also managed to stay still for a couple of hours instead of starting to fidget after about 5 minutes of sitting still!

Later on we strolled along to the opposite end of the beach and by a combination of wading and climbing got round to the next couple of coves.  We almost wished we had come to this end of the beach first because it was even nicer than the area where we had been.  This is definitely a beach to come back to again, I think it might even have supplanted Leadbetter/Hendry beaches as top of my favourite beach list.

We had another short session on the slack line before we left but my heart wasn't in it and back at the motel I also skipped the ice cold pool and headed straight for the hot tub.  Even that seemed way too much effort and the rest of the evening I spent doing absolutely nothing.  Fortunately Martin had more energy and appetite than I did so he microwaved some of our left over camping supplies and produced another Indian feast for supper.