Our final destination is Yellow Point

Our final destination is Yellow Point, back on the other side of the island. We have decided that the journey back across to one of the ferry ports from Tolfino is just too far to risk missing the boat. Sarah trawls the internet, and finds an apartment that is free for a couple of nights in a kind-of complex place. Not the sort of place that the Goodfellow family usually heads for, but there is a swimming pool, tennis court etc., and from the photos it does look beautiful.

The drive across the island takes rather an age – there are roadworks on the road across the mountains, and we stop for a break at a place advertising the biggest redwoods around.

They are truly huge, and the kids clamber around on one that has fallen over, and pose for photos.
We arrive at Yellowpoint (finally) and the apartment is indeed very comfortable. It’s nice, I guess, after living wild for a week, and everyone is able to clean up. We go for a bit of a drive to find supplies, and stumble across and “English Pub”. Thoughts are very much turning to home by now, and we stop in for a pint. Alas, no children are allowed, although we find a lost one who seems to live there, who shows us how (not) to catch bullfrogs in a pond which is ridiculously full of them.

So we head back towards the apartment, armed now with a couple of cold tinnies. At this point SG has a good plan, and we park up at on the side of the road and trek down to a small beach which is clearly popular as a good place for a dip. There is someone swimming, and his dog, but it really is very cold and none of us venture in. It’s a great place to watch the sun go down. On the way back, we have fights with fir cones and, rather predictably, there are tears. A cracking shot from me, as it happens, but I get no credit for it.

The rest of our time here is fairly chilled – we have a good game of tennis, we go crabbing, we hunt for the famous purple starfish (these are not hard to find).

My thoughts turn finally to work, as I download the emails that I have not looked at for the past ten weeks. I intend to go through these on the plane on the way home. Reassuringly, I am really quite excited to hear how things have been going while I have been away. I wonder how my partner Rachel has been getting on with my clients…


Packing up is, predictably, as miserable as it ever was although at least we don’t need to do it again now. We faff about deciding whether to drive down to Victoria for an early boat, or stay up here for a later one, and eventually opt for the latter, to spare ourselves a drive. It means that things will be a little tight at the airport, but we are getting good at that bit now. In the end it all works like clockwork – we have a hearty breakfast, then join the queue for the boat, and there is a good kids’ playground to occupy people while I wander around eyeing up RVs that I am going to buy when I return to Blighty.

The boat is then easy, getting to the airport is easy, even getting on the plane poses no issues for us now. There is very much a sense that everyone wants to get home and it feels a bit as if we are treading water, just waiting for that to happen. We have had a fantastic time, and looking back on the previous trips that we have done, it really could have been six months that we have been away. I feel rejuvenated, we have had a great time as a family, and the kids have all grown up a lot. We simply must do this again one day…