Baw Baw Village to Mt St Phillack, Baw Baw National Park - May 2016

Last week our seemingly endless Indian summer meant that I was able to wander around the sea side town of Sorrento in a shirt and a light weight shirt, this week we've flicked the switch and winter seems to have arrived. With some fairly average weather buffeting the state for much of the week I had only managed to ride to work once so I was keen to get out and do a walk on Saturday, but where to go? Walking in cold rain isn't my favourite type of walking, and with rain and showers predicted for most of the state my options were looking a little on the thin side, walking in the snow is actually a lot more enjoyable than the rain in my books so with snow showers predicted down to 1200 metres on Saturday I figured that a snow walk would be the go. So after consulting my library of guide books I decided to head up to Mt Baw Baw and do one of Mr Chapman's walks.

This fairly non-descript intersection in the small Mt Baw Baw Village is the start of the walk.

So after dusting off all my cold weather gear I headed off on the pleasant two and a half hour drive to Mt Baw Baw, arriving at 10:30am to be greeted by sleet and low cloud, sleet is still better than rain in my books. After rugging up I headed through the small village to the start near the visitor centre, I was on fairly familiar territory here as I've skied and walked at Mt Baw Baw a fair bit over the years, so there was no real issue today finding the start of the walk. Leaving behind the dormant ski lifts I crossed a small creek and climbed up a walking track before joining a wide cross country ski trail. There are a lot of intersecting tracks through here with numerous cross country ski trails heading off into the snow gums so it pays to keep a bit of an eye on your map, you're not going to get seriously lost but you can easily find yourself having to retrace a little to get back on the right route.

Leaving the village and ski tows behind.

I was now climbing the well defined and signposted Village Trail, the weather was more or less holding with the occasional sleety shower sweeping through. It was beautiful easy walking along here, the Snow Gums not only covered with fresh snow but, something that is very rare in our alps nowadays, the Snow Gums are all mature and haven't been scorched in bush fires. Arriving at a track junction called Five Ways it was time to put the DSLR away in the dry bag, with the weather now deteriorating a bit I would now have to use my small waterproof camera, so the photos will suffer a bit. Five Ways also marked the spot where the day walkers at Mt Baw Baw had turned back, from now on the only foot prints in the snow were from the native animals.

Easy walking on Village Trail.

Leaving Five Ways the Village Trail gently makes its way to Baragwanath Flat, with virgin snow to walk on it was really enjoyable walking along here, the cross country ski trail providing gentle gradients and making it easy for me to take in the scenery without worrying about tripping over. Obviously there was no far reaching views today, but with the mist swirling through the large granite boulders and the vivid colours on the wet trunks on the Snow Gums, there was lots to hold my interest. Arriving at Baragwanath Flat I left the ski resort behind and entered the Baw Baw National Park, leaving the cross country ski trails behind I now headed off into the gathering gloom towards Mt St Phillack on more traditional walking tracks.

At Baragwanath Flat I headed off onto more traditional walking tracks.

Yeah, I'm a bit of a fan of the old Snow Gums!

Now on the narrower walking pad I had to concentrate a little more to keep from going arse over in the slippery icy conditions, the snowy track drops a little to cross West Tanjil Creek on a long section of boardwalk before climbing up to meet the long distance Australian Alps Walking Track. The Australian Alps Track is a walk that is still on my bucket list to do at some stage, I've walked sections of it but I'd really like to tackle the whole 600 to 700 kilometres one day.....watch this space! Today though I only followed a very short section up to the summit of Mt St Phillack, at 1565 metres Mt St Phillack isn't that high by world standards but its not bad for Australia. Arriving at the summit cairn the weather was now seriously cold, any sleet had long gone and it was now real snow falling. I was feeling pretty happy though, the walk was half over and the going, whist cold and snowy, was pretty easy really, sitting on the cairn eating my scroggin I was thinking to myself how good is this snow walking caper?

After meeting The Australian Alps Walking Track I made the short side trip up to the summit of Mt St Phillack.

The Feral walker on Mt St Phillack.

So, after retracing a little to a small saddle above Freemans Flat on the Australian Alps Walking Track I turned off onto my return route. Now I haven't walked this track for quite a few years, but my memories of it were that it was a bit overgrown so I was expecting some slow going with everything covered in fresh snow. Initially I dropped down through the low alpine scrub to an old signpost standing like a lonely sentinel on the wind swept Freemans Flat, there was a selection of rough pads to follow until I reached the signpost but from there on I was more or less off track until I reached the Village Trail again at Baragwanath Flat. Now there may have been a rough pad, but with the low alpine scrub now weighed down with snow, for the most part I couldn't detect it. With map, compass and GPS now being frequently referred to progress slowed a little, every now and again I'd come across a sign that this used to be a designated walking track, a derelict bridge here, the odd snow pole there, but for the most part I was pushing through the waist high alpine scrub.

Pushing through the snow covered scrub down onto Freemans Flat, there is an old signpost in the photo somewhere.

Partially frozen tarns on Freemans Flat.

Sections of the old pad were a little on the damp side.

Stay on the right side!

Slowly but surely I made my way over the low ridge that features some large granite boulders called The Tors, dropping off the ridge I picked up a very old track track down to Baragwanath Flat, a hundred metres or so from where I left the Village Trail earlier in the day I picked it up again. Hey, hey, happy days, I was now back on a wide cleared path, what could go wrong? Quite a bit actually, after a few hundred metres of cruisey snow walking along Village Trail I arrived at a track junction informing me that the Village Trail was closed for summer maintenance, hmmm, what to do? Figuring that summer was well and truly over and that I had already completed a long section off piste I decided that the closed Village Trail wouldn't hold to many terrors for me.

Climbing up towards The Tors, for the most part I couldn't see a pad, it was mostly map, notes and GPS along here.

Every now and again I'd come across a tell tale sign that I was on the right track.

Up on The Tors I came across these snow poles resting in the forest, it looks like Parks Vic maybe trying to discourage punters from walking this track.

Pushing through this stuff is fairly hard work, a lot of it was waist height.

Back on Village Trail, all easy from now on....

But then again..... Seeing that summer was well and truly over I was fairly confident that there wouldn't be much maintenance going on today, so I pushed on.

So off I trudged up the Village Trail, by now the weather conditions had deteriated even more and visibility was down to a few metres at times. Whilst officially closed Village Trail still had quite a few snow poles, track markers and signposts visible so navigation wasn't really much of an issue even in the low visibility. I guess the reason that the track was closed was because in spots it had become completely overgrown with scrub and also a lot of the track infrastructure had fallen into disrepair, it wasn't a real problem but it wasn't a section of track for inexperienced walkers. After crossing the very damp Long Plain and Pudding Basin the overgrown track came out at LaTrobe Track and at around the same time I started to see the resorts ski tows and infrastructure materialise out of the gloom.

Some of the infrastructure on the last section of the Village Trail needed a bit of love.

Long Plain.

The closed section of Village Trail between Long Plain and Pudding Basin was the most overgrown bit.

A tarn on Pudding Basin.

The walk was now coming to a quick end as I followed the cross country trails back down to the visitor centre, the main interest along this short section was the large granite boulders in the forest, with a light sprinkling of fresh snow on them looking a bit like icing sugar on a cake. Reaching the visitor centre it was just a matter of trudging through the small alpine village back to the main carpark. After quickly slipping out of my damp wet weather gear and throwing it all in the back of the ute I jumped in and cranked up the heater, interestingly the ambient was hovering in the -1 to 0 degree range, yeah it was a bit chilly. After giving Sam a quick call to let her know all was well I headed off, arriving home at 6pm after what had been a fairly action packed day to a warm home. By the way if you want to see Lyrebirds in the bush the drive up from Noojee to Mt Baw Baw is the place to go, on the drive up and down the mountain I must have seen a dozen Lyrebirds from the front seat of the ute, unfortunately they were all way to quick for me to get a photo of them but there are a lot of them out there.

On my final descent back to the village.

The forest has a lot of these giant boulders scattered through it.

The Dirt.

I walked 11.3 kilometres and climbed 377 metres on this walk. I notice Mr Chapman rates this as a Medium-Hard standard walk, I'd rate my walk today as a Hard walk. Maybe the pad across The Tors would be followable if there wasn't any snow on the ground, I'm not sure, but under snow its definitely hard. The return route along the southern part of the Village Trail was fairly hard as well, although the trail was closed so you can't really complain about that, the closed Village Trail was nowhere near as tough as the track over The Tors though. Like I've mentioned above this walk has been published by the House of Chapman, its walk number 34 in the second edition of their Day Walks Victoria book.

A slightly dishevelled Feral walker about to jump in the ute and head home, I'm cultivating the late Bob Ellis look!(And so he went...hey its my blog)...if only I had his gift when driving the key board!

London, England - September 2015

The view of London from our room.

London, what could I possibly write about London that hasn't been said a hundred times before? Probably not much really, but don't worry that wont stop me crapping on for awhile! We found ourselves in London for the first time for around 5 days last September on our way to and from Glasgow and our walk on the West Highland Way. Seeing that I'd dragged Sam to the other side of the world to walk through the Scottish Highlands for a couple of weeks I figured that for the sake of my marriage I'd better splurge a bit on our stay in London, so I booked us into the Shangri-La at The Shard, we were hardly going to be roughing it, but more on that later. 

Very, very flash digs, but I'll get back to this at the end of the post.

My pre-conceived idea of London was of a grey, damp, conservative city. I didn't go over with high expectations really, I figured that Sam would do a bit of shopping and we could check out a couple of museums and spend a bit of time getting sorted for the West Highland Way. Yeah you might say I underestimated London a little, as it turned out I've never enjoyed my time in a major city more, five days was nowhere near enough, we could of stayed for months and still been happy. Now don't forget this is coming from a bloke who normally likes nothing better than big skies and open spaces, so to be raving about a city is a little out of character. 

We explored up towards Tower Bridge on our first afternoon in town, the South Bank Precinct was a nice easy introduction to London.

Arriving into the welcoming embrace of the Shangri La was a pretty soft way to ease ourselves into a new city. With the Shard being situated in the South Bank Precinct we were able to explore a lot of the more popular sites either on foot or within a reasonably priced taxi ride away. Arriving after our long flight from Melbourne, and keen to keep jet lag at bay, we headed out to explore a little in the late afternoon. The foyer of the Shangri La opens out about twenty feet from the escalators for London Bridge Station, the pedestrian passages of the station letting us easily access the Queens Walk on the South Bank of the Thames. Once on the walkway above the river we meandered our way  along towards Tower Bridge, even the balmy September weather this afternoon was making us feel at home, by the look of it the locals were enjoying the weather as well judging by the amount of punters at the pop up restaurants near Tower Bridge. After grabbing an early dinner we wandered our way back to The Shard and settled into our room to watch our first sun set over London, yeah life was hard!

On the Queens Walk along the South Bank of The Thames.

Sunsets were a feature of our stay in London, now that's probably not a sentence that is used to often.

Our second day in London started with the best breakfast that I've ever had, the fresh strawberries, blackberries and blue berries with yogurt being a highlight for me, oh yeah and while eating it we watched a small cruise ship navigate its way up the Thames far below us, docking just before London Bridge. Feeling very satisfied after breakfast we jumped into a taxi and headed out to Kensington and the Natural History Museum. We arrived nice and early which was just as well as this place gets really busy, with free admission (although a donation is appreciated) this place is a must see I reckon, even more so if you have some kids in tow, even without any ankle biters with us we really enjoyed our visit (this really enjoyable stuff is going to get boring very quickly isn't it). By late morning with the crowds starting to pour in and the queues starting to get fairly long we headed out onto Cromwell Road and made our way to somewhere that Sam had been looking forward to, Harrods. Now I'm not going to bullshit you and say that I really enjoyed my time wandering around Harrods, but it was definitely more interesting for me than a visit to Chadstone (but then again a visit to the dentist has more appeal to me than a visit to Chadstone!). One thing to note if visiting Harrods on a day out in London is that you are not allowed to wear a back back inside the store, you have to carry it in your hands which isn't the most comfortable way to get around.

The Natural History Museum, it wasn't busy yet.

The Natural History Museum is a must see, especially if you have kids in tow.

The grand building on the left is Harrods, apparently they sell stuff.

After Harrods it was back out to Cromwell Road and we headed off in the direction of Buckingham Palace, London was already becoming a roll call of famous sites, it seemed like almost every time we turned a corner there was another world famous attraction. On our walk down to Buckingham Palace we passed through Hyde Park Corner and checked out the Australian and the New Zealand War memorials there, near Wellington Arch. After taking the obligatory shot of Buckingham Palace we continued on through St James Park where Sam had her first ever squirrel encounter, suitably chuffed after our encounter with the furry critter (hey, we don't have any in Australia) we made our way to the Thames and crossed over on Westminster Bridge. The South Bank of the Thames was a heaving mass of humanity on this beautiful afternoon, the crowds in the vicinity of the London Eye were particularly thick, after making our way past the London Eye the crowds thinned out to a manageable level as we made our way along towards Tate Modern. Like the Natural History Museum, Tate Modern is a must see I reckon, the former power station with its brutalist architecture housing a vast array of thought provocking modern art. Like the National History Museum admission is fee but a donation is definitely appreciated, we timed our visit fairly well again turning up late in the afternoon as most people were heading home for the day and with the museum open until 10pm on a Friday we had plenty of time to check everything out. It was two fairly tired antipodeans that eventually emerged from Tate Modern into the early London evening, wondering along the Thames back to our flash digs we continued to pass a roll call of famous sites, Millennium Bridge, Shakespeare's Globe, Southwark Cathedral, hmmm you get the idea.

The Australian War Memorial at Hyde Park Corner.

A Squirrel in St James Park, a bit of a novelty for us antipodeans.

There was even a few sand sculptures on the banks of The Thames.

Tate Modern, this place is awesome!

Picasso, at Tate Modern.

These girls seemed more interested in their phones than what was on offer at Tate Modern.

Our third day in London started with a short stroll in the rain over to the Borough Market to check out the diverse food on offer, the crocodile and the kangaroo making me think that I was back home. After a poke around the markets we jumped into a taxi and made the short trip over to the National Gallery. Once again free entry with a donation appreciated, the National Gallery offers a stunning range of world class art and like the other big attraction in town it pays to go early or late, luckily we were there early enough to avoid the biggest crowds and were able to wonder around checking out a who's who of famous artists without large crowds. Walking around the cavernous halls of the National Gallery was like bringing history to life, and that's coming from a feral like me, Van Gogh, Renoir, Michelangelo, Monet...even I knew that I was witnessing something special.

Borough market was only a couple of minutes walk from our hotel.

I'd go for the roo....medium rare.

The cavernous halls of the National Gallery.

Van Gogh.

Just you and me and Claude Monet!

Even some of the public spaces in the National Gallery were interesting.

The National Gallery from Trafalgar Square.

Leaving the National Gallery we meandered our way up Charing Cross Road to Soho. Maybe because it's still got some rough edges but Soho was the highlight of London for me, the little book shops, cafes and bars, along with a little bit of rock and roll history meant that I was never bored. After checking out the shops in Carnaby Street we headed to the Photographer's Gallery, once again free entry except for visiting exhibitions, now the Photographer's Gallery isn't in the same league as some of the more famous museums and galleries in London but it still worth checking out if you find yourself in Soho, I was particularly happy to see the late (now) great Lemmy from Motorhead featuring in a couple of the photos. After a late lunch at the cafe at massive Foyles Bookshop (how good would it be to have a bookshop like this in Melbourne!) we headed back to base via Coventry Gardens.

Wandering up to Soho.

The Photographers Gallery in Soho is worth checking out.

Vale Lemmy.

There are plenty of quirky little shops to check out around Soho.

And a fair bit rock and roll interest as well.

Day four we took it a little easier, organising a few things for our up coming walk in Scotland. We still managed to head over to Piccadilly Circus before strolling up Shaftesbury Avenue and then to Leicester Square and Stanford's Book Shop. Stamford's sells travel literature, maps and guides, the perfect spot for the feral walker to spend an hour or so dreaming of future adventures, eventually we left Stamford's although now our luggage would be a few kilograms heavier for the rest of the trip! After checking out crowds of tourist in Covent Garden Piazza we once again crossed the Thames and meandered our way back to the Shard on The Queens Walk, London still looking beautiful in the late afternoon sun.

Piccadilly Circus.

Covent Garden.

Heading back along South Bank to our hotel, Shakespeare's Globe.

That's our hotel.

On our last day in London we headed along The Queens Walk back towards Tower Bridge and then crossed the Thames to check out the Tower of London, the crowds stopped us from going in on this occasion so I guess we'll have to go back again someday. With an afternoon transfer coming up we headed back to the Shard early to pack up and check out, enjoying a high tea in Aqua at The Shard, yeah I was totally out of my depth but hey, you only live once!

The Tower of London.

Tower Bridge.

In the ye olde days the Tower of London had some pretty serious security.

One of the surprises for me was the amount of modern architecture in London.

Alright, lets talk accommodation, like I've already mentioned we stayed at the rather flash Shangri La at The Shard. This is probably the best hotel that I've ever stayed in, while the rooms are very flash the best thing about the hotel is the view over London, with the hotel being near the top of the highest building in Western Europe the views as you would imagine, are extensive. The rooms at The Shard feature floor to ceiling windows, so you can take in the view of London from the comfort of the bed, the shower, the bath, or even the crapper, interestingly at night you can also quite easily see into the same windows of all the rooms around you, so if you're a bit on the shy side make sure you close your blinds even though you're up in the clouds! The other notable thing about the Shangri La was the bathrooms, the toilet was the most high tech arrangement that I've ever had the pleasure to park my fat arse on, with more controls than a car I was still finding new features on the crapper after five days. Like I mentioned earlier on, the breakfast at The Shangri La was the best that I've ever had, the freshness and the quality of the food was not something that I really expected in the middle of London. We also had some drinks in Gong up near the top of The Shard, we hadn't booked but they made room for us when told that we were staying at the hotel, we didn't have dinner the hotel but we did partake in High Tea on our last day and it was frightfully nice....and expensive, probably the only thing that I wouldn't do again if I happen to be lucky enough to frequent the hotel again.

Alright, lets have a look at The Shangri La at The Shard.

The bathroom featured a flat screen TV inside the mirror in the bath room, when the telly was off it's indistinguishable in the mirror.

The view from the bath wasn't bad either, although its best if you're not shy.

It was amazing to sleep with the curtains open and wake during the night to this view.

The Dirt.

Well what's the dirt on London? As I've already said we loved it over there, the only thing I'd do different next time would be to head over after we've won The Ashes in England not just after we'd lost them! With a bit of time up your sleeve it would be possible to see a lot of London on the cheap using the tube and shanks pony, with only limited time we generally taxied out to an attraction in the morning and then meandered our way back to the hotel by nightfall on foot. We were extremely lucky with the weather I suppose, having only one morning of light rain on our stay which helped make our walking around more enjoyable. The most pleasant surprise for me was Soho, I really enjoyed the somewhat laid back vibe about the place, in fact if we don't stay at the Shangri La next time we are in London then I'd definitely look at staying in Soho somewhere. Alright what's the dirt on Shangri La at The Shard, well this is really a lifestyles of the rich and shameless kind of place, having said that I've stayed in plenty of places over the years that I think have been over rated and over priced, I didn't think that at the Shangri La though, the view alone is almost worth the price I reckon, and then there is the awesomely comfy bed and flash room, yeah it was expensive but for a special occasion it was worth it in my opinion. 

Our bathroom was home to the most hi tech toilet that I've ever parked my bum on.

My plumber mates in Australia wold be having nightmares trying to install this.

It's even got its own extraction system, I can think of a few long drops that I've used over the years that I wish had  this feature!

This is the view from the public toilet near reception, yeah I felt a bit weird taking photos in a public toilet.