Tasmanian Trail Hike - Day 018 - Railton to East Devonport

Day: 18

Date:  Monday, 04 November 2019

Start:  Railton

Finish:  East Devonport

Daily Kilometres:  23.5 (27.3 TT less 4.3 saved through TT re-route plus 1.0 in towns)

Total TT Kilometres:  470.2

Weather:  Mostly overcast, cool to mild and breezy, with occasional light showers.

Accommodation:  Ferry

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  None.

  Lunch:  Egg & bacon pie, vanilla slice

  Dinner:  Pizza, ice-cream

Aches:  None really

Highlight:  None really

Lowlight:  The 13km roadwalk from Railton to Latrobe, required because of the closure of the official TT route following a dispute with a landowner, was not much fun.  Although it is a public holiday in northern Tasmania, there was still plenty of traffic and quite a few trucks. There was not much verge to the road (more of a narrow rough ditch), but I still retreated there every time I met an oncoming vehicle as I walked facing the traffic.  I thought I was OK staying on the edge of the sealed surface when there were no oncoming vehicles, but learned my lesson when a car coming from behind overtook another vehicle and missed my left elbow by a few centimetres at most.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

I took my time getting up, knowing I did not have a long day, and didn't leave the cabin until about 8:45am.  I was guessing I only had a couple of hours walking to Latrobe, a bigger town than the tiny Railton, so decided to wait until I reached the former before eating breakfast.  I miscalculated and it took over three hours of tedious roadwalking (see above), though the forested countryside was attractive, to reach Latrobe. Once there, I detoured into the town and found a very busy bakery open for business, and ordered some lunch, since it was now midday.

Half an hour later, I was walking again, this time along a less busy road that followed the broad Mersey River estuary towards Devonport.  I could smell the sea air. After 90 minutes I entered suburbia and then reached the unprepossessing East Devonport port area. Although check-in to get on my overnight ferry to Melbourne supposedly doesn't start until 5pm, I walked down to the passenger terminal and found it open, arriving at 2:30pm and reaching the official end of the Tasmanian Trail.

I did a quick change in the toilets into some less smelly/dirty clothes and sorted out what gear I needed to keep with me on board after I checked my backpack, although ultimately, I decided to keep my backpack with me and just leave it on my booked recliner seat.  I boarded soon after 5pm and the ferry departed at 7:30pm.

My ferry arrives in Melbourne at 6am tomorrow and then I have a 4km walk to the main railway station from where I will catch a train departing at 8:30am for Sydney.  From there another train to Gosford where Julie will pick me up at 9:30pm tomorrow night, all going to plan.

While I enjoyed the Tasmanian Trail, and it met my expectations for attractive rather than spectacular scenery, I do think it is more suited to mountain bike travel because there are so many long road stretches.  Although I had feet problems the whole way, I think they have improved since buying the New Balance shoes at Deloraine three days ago, and generally, I feel I got into the hiking groove properly by the end of the trip.  Now looking forward to next year.