The Victoria and Alfred Waterfront

Sunday morning dawned grey and overcast! I stood outside with my morning coffee after a good night's sleep and gloomily looked at the light drizzle that was dampening my hopes of a ride down to Capetown, we were to meet my Sister Annette and Brother in law Barry at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront for lunch and I seriously did not want to drive down!

As I have said before, we don't mind riding in the rain, hell we have done it many times as of course you will if you ride a motorbike for any length of time - but if we don't have to then most of the time we would rather avoid it.

I kept an eye on the weather during the morning and happily by 10am it was looking a little bit better, I found that if I stood on tip toe and squinted my eyes towards the north west I could just about see some small patches of blue sky. The weather site; windfinder.com was quite adamant that there would not be any rain so we set off on the big red machine.

It was a cold ride, the temperature was 9,5 degrees when we started and it didn't get any higher than 10 degrees on the way back but I thoroughly enjoyed it, Janet complained of being cold but she also enjoyed the ride.

We met my family and had a very good lunch, a couple of glasses of wine and a good chat at the Waterfront, one of my favourite places in Capetown. There is always such a good vibe there, plenty of eye candy for the guys and on this visit we heard plenty of English and Irish accents from the many people who were following the Confederation cup football games.The Waterfront is a major tourist attraction in Capetown with many different restaurants and shops, entertainment areas and harbour boat trips and we had a bit of a walkabout before getting back on the road.

As usual Janet was dozing off before we had got very far out of town. I really need to glue a big rubber pad onto the back of my helmet because that's how I know she is falling asleep, she starts leaning against my helmet and pushing my head forward!

A lot of Janet's non-biking friends, as well as my sisters cannot believe that she can fall asleep on the back of the bike; "Aren't you scared you are going to fall off?" they ask, horrified. But after talking to other biker ladies we found that it is not uncommon and quite a lot of them will have "forty winks" on a long ride.

It was a lovely ride home, the big red machine ate up the kilometres and the weather stayed kind to us. We were both cold by the time we got home but an hour in the spa bath soon sorted that out.

I now have to wash the bike before we can go anywhere else because she is pretty dirty but as I have said before, that is a labour of love and I enjoy doing it.

Next weekend I am entertaining about twenty of my friends at Linda's house in Capetown for my "Coming of age get together", I am turning 60 next week! I don't normally do the birthday thing but most of these people were at my 50th and they will all be here on Sunday, plus a few others, for lunch. I am planning to do fresh oysters and marinated mussels for starters, then there will be a big pan of roasted chicken wings. The main course is going to be an oxtail pot and then we will end off with cheese and biscuits with Belgian chocolates, it should be a gas and I am looking forward to it - I will let you know how it goes.