Bill Wood Reserve

 

Another new one for today's Lockdown 2 exercise walk: The Bill Wood Reserve in Glenhaven. And it's a rather nice one!

Give us this day our daily park

As in exercise park. One of the reasons we're officially allowed out of our homes during Lockdown 2 is of course exercise, up to 10km from home. Or within your LGA (local government area). I've no idea whether that means whichever of the two is further or whichever is nearer. One more silly ambiguity in the regulations.

Anyway, either way there are lots of parks out there, many of which I reported on last year, during our Lockdown 1. Amazingly, I'm still discovering new ones for the daily excursion. Here's a view of Foxglove Oval in Mount Colah yesterday.

Our exercise trips do involve some genuine exercise. We actually run around the park, sort of. But we always psyche ourselves up first with a takeaway coffee on a park bench. I remember when Lockdown 1 first came in, there were reports of over-zealous police officers issuing fines to people on park benches. Thankfully that seems to have stopped.

Testing times again

The latest Sydney COVID lockdown has been extended now to a 3rd and 4th week, and looks quite capable of ballooning out to that many months at least. And still only a small proportion of us are vaccinated.

Suddenly people are getting themselves tested. When I checked out the pop-up drive-in testing clinic in North Rocks yesterday it was doing good business. A big change from a couple of weeks ago.

It's all got a bit deadly serious again.

Taffys Rock from Cowan

 

This one's an old favourite. Down to Jerusalem Bay from Cowan station, up the big up, and turn right at the top. Then it's a few zigs and zags and ups and downs, and a few hours later you're there!

It's a great little walk, especially on a gorgeous sunshiny day like yesterday. And usually you see no other parties. Yesterday was exceptional though, with Sydney's current Covid 'latte lockdown' bringing out exercisers by the million. At least they presumably weren't clogging up the shopping centres.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Along the way there are several interesting rocks, caves, crawl holes, and an aboriginal carving or three. Lots to see.

Taffy was in fact a Welsh-born bushwalker called Dorothy Townson. She died in 1948 in a particularly unfortunate bushwalking accident on the Overland Track in Tasmania, involving a snakebite and a sensitive part of the anatomy. I'd often been told the cautionary tale while living there, and only recently made the connection with this Sydney bushwalking location. The memorial plaque was placed here because it was her all-time favourite place.

It's also one of my favourite places. It was the destination for my first overnight camping trip with All Nations Bushwalkers more than 20 years ago, and I've brought many groups back there since.