Byron Bay 1

Byron Bay was great over the weekend - a lovely break away from it all. The weather forecast wasn't great but Saturday dawned with beautiful blue skies. Had a quick ride up to the beach on Saturday morning to 'check the surf' and it was flat as a bat

Still - hard to be disappointed. Even the bike had a beach theme :)

I used to surf over Easter in the UK on miserable rainy days in water so cold that it gave you an ice-cream headache. The water temperature was 20 degrees on Saturday so my mates back in the UK would be disgusted at me for not going in. Then again my mates over here would have been disgusted if I HAD gone in.

We went for a drive instead. First stop was 'The Crystal Castle', a new-age mecca set in the beautiful hinterlands inland of Byron. It fell very firmly on the commercial and indeed corny side of enlightenment - a charge that could equally be levelled at Byron itself - but once you looked past the cliches it was a very beautiful place

The Castle is set high in the rainforest with plenty of natural beauty as well

After dosing up on karma & good vibes we quickly took a look at Minyon Falls - dropping over 100m into the bush below

and then we visited Nimbin to experience the flipside of the New Age dream.

Nimbin is a small farming town that hosted the 'Aquarian Festival' in 1972. Since then it's become a mecca for hippie types and sadly also the centre of a very active drug trade. Marijuana is sold openly so backpackers from Byron arrive in droves. We were asked if we wanted anything to smoke about a dozen times in the space of a 50m walk (the first yelled out across the carpark as we were getting out of the car) and it wasn't a fun thing - the sellers weren't amiable dreadlocked hippies offering their favourite locally grown crossbreeds but youngish lads in hooded tops standing around in gangs offering industrially farmed, hydroponically grown hybrids bred only for strength. The whole town had a seedy, run-down and threatening air and we didn't want to spend much time there, despite the somewhat unusual 'hemp museum' with an exhibit which pretty much summed it up

I've had friends who've spent a few weeks staying in Nimbin and they tell me that it's a great place with a friendly, active & socially aware community. But that isn't apparent from first impressions. Slightly deflated we headed back to Byron but the drive through the rainforest & along the coast perked us up, particularly when we passed the big prawn.