More training - mountains, forests and beaches

Back in May, one fine day - sunny, cool and no wind - I went for a solo walk up Mt Vandyke - the mountain beside Mt Roland, near my home. Vandyke is a little shorter than Roland but it is still a very decent hill climb to get to the top. Perfect place for lunch.

There are some seriously weird rock formations up on top of Vandyke. They are all conglomerate, a lumpy sedementary rock that looks like someone cemented thousands of round river stones and pebbles together into strange sculptures. Quite different rock to Cradle Mountain and its neighbours. Those snow-capped mountains on the horizon are the ones you walk by along the Overland Track, including Mt Ossa, Tasmania's highest.

When Kate and Gustav Weindorfer honeymooned in a tent on top of Mt Roland in 1906, this is the view of Barn Bluff and Cradle Mountain that they would have seen. Cradle looks very different from this angle compared with the commonly photographed view from Dove Lake.

I am loving this training! Over the Queens Birthday long weekend, I went east. To the Pyengana Dairy Farm cafe. These are BIG scones. Can I do it?

Yes! I can! But only just.

S and I had just finished a day of walking at the Blue Tier, in north-east Tasmania. At times along the Wellington Creek circuit, we felt like we were in an English wood.

This is a myrtle tree, but it reminded us of an oak.

A beautifully distorted view

Through ice from a frozen pool.

Then, before the scones, a couple of kilometres in the ferns along the river at Halls Falls.

Natures art work - tannin foam swirls.

The previous day - a totally different walk at the Bay of Fires. We spent about five hours wandering along the beach, trying to follow almost non-existent tracks through scrub over headlands, along a long white cresent beach and two secluded coves. There were footprints all over the beach but the only human footprints were our own.

Seal hides where Aboriginal women used to sit waiting, hunting for seals.

Morning tea beside a bird-abundant lagoon. Calm, still - reflections! More art work.

Could there be a more perfect way to train for a long walk?

"The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts...the mind is also a landscape...walking is one way to traverse it." Rebecca Solnit

Training!

I am in training. Oh yes!! Devonshire tea, or clotted cream tea if you are in Cornwall.
At Fudge'n'Good Coffee in Sheffield.

In August, my fellow wanderer, Sheryl, and I are off to do a very, very long walk in England. It is called the South West Coast Path and will take us along the dramatic cliff-lined coastline of Somerset, Dorset, Cornwall and Devon - the home of the Devonshire tea, although Cornwall would dispute that. 

When we finished our last multi-day walk, the West Highland Way in Scotland, Sheryl fatefully said that she wanted to walk 1,000 kms! And I recorded that statement here: Wandering Walkers 10-11 over celebratory apple crumble in Fort William, after only 155kms. 

Recently I typed up my journal notes from that UK trip, all 60,000 plus words, partly because a few people suggested I should write a book but mostly just to reminisce. I don't think there is a book in it.  I was shocked by the number of times I had written, "had coffee and cake" and "good scones today". These things are not part of my normal diet at home. I was also shocked by the number of times I had written "took ibuprofen" for my hamstrings - the ones I tore off the bone in 2016. 

Me waiting for the luggage van in Italy to take me to Switzerland while every one else walked.

So, today I tried to convince myself I was walking in England. Green rolling hills, English trees, contented cows, even a few hedges...

But there were quite a few gum trees and warbling magpies. And there is the familiar Mt Roland in the distance.

I walked 7.5km from my home at the foot of Mt Roland into the town of Sheffield, enjoyed a Devonshire tea for my lunch, had a look at the new murals from the recent International Mural Competition, and then walked home.  

A total of 15 kms, a fairly average day on the SWCP. My feet hurt. My hamstrings burned just a bit going up the hills. I massaged voltaren gell into my feet and took ibuprofen when I got home. I need to do more training which obviously must include cream teas and cake!