Coastal Walks

Much as we'd love to head up to the Blue Mountains every week to train it's a bit tough as it's a decent 1&3/4 hr drive each way minimum and currently I'm working 6 days a week, so we've decided to try and do one week on one week off in the mountains for the time being, maybe this will change if I become a little less busy at work.

Anyway variety is the spice of life so this week we thought we'd head down to the Royal National Park to hike from Garie to Otford and back. Must admit I kind of underestimated this walk, having spent a fair bit of time in the RNP surfing I thought I was practically a park ranger and it would just be a cruisy little stroll.

Well, turned out it was actually a fair bit harder than I thought! Maybe there's something about going into something too confident that can give you a shock 😂. It was 18kms and we walked it in 4.5hrs (including a stop off at the nice but very touristy figure of 8 rock pool). Felt like we made fairly good time and set a good pace. Brought my old mate ,6kgs kettle bell, along for a laugh and my legs were certainly feeling it toward the end.

Mai seemed pretty (annoyingly) comfortable through most of it but was a bit tired towards the end (insert evil laugh). She may also have had to take over the wheel on the drive home so the expedition leader could gain some shut eye, tiring work all that planning ....... yes.

Was a good days training in a beautiful place that's really pretty close to home. Couple of photos below. Quite an interesting point is all the buildings you see are only accessible by foot, have no electricity and the closest car park a good 30mins walk away. They're "beach shacks" that hark back to the days of simpler times where planning permission etc. is concerned.

They belong to people (although the land doesn't) and I'd heard they were to be taken back and demolished by the National Parks but after having a quick browse on Google have learned that they recently acquired heritage listing and will remain. Pretty happy about that as they're really a part of the park, a few really interesting scattered communities and a good reminder of simpler times.