Day: 09
Date: Saturday, 26 October 2019
Start: Victoria Valley
Finish: Bronte Park
Daily Kilometres: 33.3
Total TT Kilometres: 238.3
Weather: Cold and mostly overcast with occasional rain and snow/sleet showers.
Accommodation: Cabin
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Snickers and Mars bars
Lunch: Trail Mix
Dinner: Ravioli and apple pie.
Aches: Feet still sore 🙁
Highlight: Getting to the cabin, escaping the miserable weather, and watching the rain and wind through the window of my heated cabin as I write this blog.
Lowlight: Not long after I decided it had warmed up in the early afternoon, I stopped and removed my thermal top (keeping on my heavy-duty rain jacket) and beanie. Within about 15 minutes, the temperature dropped and it began raining, then hailing, then snowing. Soon I was very cold (just wearing shorts as usual), but with nowhere to shelter, didn't want to stop and get stuff wet as I retrieved warmer gear and rainpants from my pack. I soldiered on as long as I dared, hoping it would blow over, but in the end stopped and put on the thermal top and beanie again. In changeable weather, it's always a challenge working out what to wear and when to change, though I knew that if worst came to worst, I had all the gear I needed in my pack to get warm and safe.
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
Today was always going to be a bit of a grind. The TT was to follow a minor gravel road for about 30km, then a sealed road for another 3km.
I got up at 6am and was walking by 7am on a cold morning. Knowing the route, I decided to try and maintain a good pace, have limited breaks, and get to the cabin I had booked for the night at a reasonable hour.
None of the roads were busy, but there was some traffic and the road easement was wide, meaning there wasn't that sense of closeness to nature that you get from the logging tracks. Mostly, I passed through forest, but there were also some cattle grazing properties, several large reservoirs that were clearly popular for fishing, and some small groups of weekend shacks. I'm now in the Central Highlands of Tasmania, and there was a more alpine feel to the vegetation. There was also lots of smelly roadkill, mostly wallabies and wombats, to hold my breath as I passed.
There wasn't much else to report on for the day, apart from the weather (see above), and it was mostly a case of just getting from A to B as quickly as possible. I reached the cabins at 3pm in light drizzle and was greeted by name by the proprietor (apparently, I'm the only booking for tonight) who also kindly drove me to the local store (barely qualified for the name), 800m away, later on so that I could feed myself tonight and tomorrow.
During the day, I decided that rather than wait until next Friday for my next day off, I would try and stay an extra night at Miena, which I reach tomorrow night. A phone call has tentatively set that up, though it may depend on the nearby bushfire (see yesterday's blog) being extinguished/tempered by the weather, so that the firefighters staying there go home tomorrow.
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