12th Jan – Horse Riding & Serious body surfing

Today was getting back to nature day, 40km away at Cooranbong we found ourselves in the forest for Bell and Riley to go horse riding. Apparently Aiden and Chris had better things to do..... or they are actually frightened of horses, who knows? While waiting for our gear we were joined by around half dozen dogs that were extremely friendly and of course looking for a scratch, one even had two different coloured eyes. Bells horse George and Riley’s horse Gypsy gave them a lovely 1 ½ hour ride without any hiccups, apart from Bell almost going head over heels  getting into the saddle....yes we saw that!... and the dogs even came too! This was Riley’s first ride, he got the hang of it pretty quickly, even managed to do some trotting along the way, there was lots of ups and downs the hills and winding through the trees. Saw one Goanna, very long black snake right at the end of a trotting session (we came to a pretty quick stop) and a huge skink. It was so good Riley had a little snooze on the way home!

Finally the sky had cleared and the sun was out (first time in 3 days) which made for a sunny afternoon so we headed to Soldiers Beach, and the surf was huge. We plunged in and had a blast body surfing and ducking under the huge waves. As the afternoon went on the rip next to the flag area gained in momentum so we took the boys out the back of the break into the swell. A great learning experience for the boys in supervised conditions.  We took a break and headed for the rocks near the lighthouse to watch the surfers get pounded by the waves. After we recovered we hit the beach for a final spell in the waves and as the wind picked up we headed for camp and called it a day.











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