Ocean Beach

 I like visiting the Pacfic Ocean for a quick paddle whenever I'm on the west coast, so today I went along the N line to the end of the line and to the beach.  However, this year I decided to go North instead of South.

It was very breezy!

It was a falling tide, which was useful as it's necessary to walk below the high tide line where the sand is more compacted, otherwise it's so soft and deep, it's a lot of effort to just walk along.

I didn't see any of the baby birds that are trying to feed at the water's edge and keep running away comically from the breaking waves, only gulls.

I decided to carry on up the hill to Land's End.  I've been to the original one in Cornwall.  The one here is rather less commercialised.

This was another hill that was longer than it looked, and it took quite a while to make it to the top.

The trees on the hillside demonstrate just how fierce the wind is, as everything leans a lot!

There were some nice views from the Land's End visitor centre.  It was a cloudy day too, not much sun.  Even though I'd got the sun cream on, there wasn't much to burn anyway.

I'd already noted that the 5R ("R" for "Rapid") bus leaves from here and goes to downtown, which I thought would be ideal.  I'd planned everything so that I could get back to my hotel to switch hats and drop off my backpack (not allowed in the stadium) and then go to the restaurant for dinner and then the evening's ballgame.

This is where things didn't go as well.  I was meant to go to EPIC Steak for dinner before yesterday's game except they texted me beforehand to say that they had a power cut and were waiting for the electricity company to fix it but couldn't be sure whether they'd do it in time.  I was given the option to cancel, reschedule or risk it and I had chosen to reschedule for today.

The wheel on the 5R bus was broken on the bus.  So I had to wait 20 minutes for the man to change it.

Then it turns out that "rapid" is a relative term - it still took 50 minutes to get back to the middle of town.  Unfortunately, I got off one stop earlier than I should have, and just missed the 30 bus that I needed and had to wait 12 minutes to the next one.

This was all very well until somebody started misbehaving at the back of the bus just after we had left, spitting at people.  The bus driver refused to do anything until the police and medical team had arrived.  So this was another 15 minutes before the next bus turned up.  It was already time for my dinner, which was still at least half an hour away, so I had to ring them and reschedule it for after the game instead.

So I went straight from my hotel to the ballpark.