Cue applause card!

Friday night saw an exodus down the highway to the Bundanoon YHA. (You can clap here if you want to because it's a mega awesome YHA, formerly an Edwardian Guest House. But make sure you save some steam if you chose to clap)

It was M's first visit to a YHA. As you can see we're definitely slumming it:
And if you were to look straight up from where we were sitting you'd see this: Is Bundanoon YHA the only hostel in the world with a chandelier?

And how beautiful is this picture of the hostel?

We all arrived with different agendas. Well, OK , I lie slightly because eating great food and drinking wine was high on all our agendas. We whipped up an eggplant, zucchini, red pepper, brocollini and tomato stew with couscous for Friday dinner after a selection of delectable snacks to give us strength.

Saturday morning, after porridge and fruit, crumpets and lemon ginger lime marmalade (and a whistle stop tour of three local op shops) I waved everyone off on their 4 hour trekand I settled in to finish this:(you can applaud now!)

Yes, 2007's winter jumper is complete! It only took putting myself under house arrest in The Southern Highlands to do so. (If anyone's interested, 40 of us can go under house arrest here for a weekend. Cost: a mere $22 a night. And they can feed us for an extra charge)

The timing was spot on, too as I got a text saying the rest of the gang were out of the National Park and heading for the pub if I wanted to walk into town to join them. Which I did, sporting my fab new hoodie.

By the time I reached town (with a detour through a fascinating secondhand shop) they had decamped from the pub (long and boring story) to the local cafewhere I spotted the perfect frugalling bike:Saturday finished with some wine and a delicious dinner at the Sutton Forest Inn followed by ginger kisses, strawberries and cream and grated chocolate back in front of the fire.

This morning breakfast got even better: leftover cream from last night and brown sugar donated by a fellow hosteller joined our porridge and fruit and we had toasted Italian bread with butter and honey to finish.

Which gave us the strength we needed to not only wander round the local markets but also to do a (comparatively) easy walk to the site of the old Erith coal mine and back.After which it was declared I simply HAD to see the view of the escarpment: After another stop at the cafe, an excellent lunch (we highly recommend the spicy vegetable rissoles with salad, hummus and sweet chili sauce), a bit of watching the Olympics (2008 style):a pit stop and a stop to admire the daffodilswe were on the road home (with a teensy weensy little detour through Collector to pick up more jam provisions for the next couple of months)