When I closed my eyes last night I must have gone out like a light, sleeping until after 4am, waiting for my alarm to go off at 4.30am. Ambles complained other campers nearby had kept him awake, having a fabulous time, being noisy, laughing, talking loudly, screaming & crying children up past 11pm. I slept through it all! We started packing up at 4.30am, joining Tim & Jules for breakfast at 5.30. Jules even made the special effort to get up early to help Tim with the bacon & eggs, getting us coffee & tea. Breakfast was so good! 😋 Much better than our daily porridge. Jules piled us up with extra food for the walk, little chocy bars & these breakfast cookies she made. So delicious with various fruit inside them.

 

We were dropped back off at William Bay Road by 6.30am. There was that option to bypass the walk & drive straight to Denmark, but we couldn’t do that! So to start with, we had a kilometre hill ascent to William Bay Shelter. That quickly warmed us up! Arrived at the shelter by 7am, Deb & Mel had packed up & gone, the place was empty. So I stopped to fill in the trails log book & snap some photos while Ambles ambled along for me to catch up to him. This shelter was very bare, no added decorations, hand rails, sunroom, nothing. And as I left I found a side trail to the look out so went over to check it out. Clambered up these big boulders & stand on top of them, checking out the ocean view back over Greens Pool & where we came yesterday. Pretty nice views. It was already feeling warm in the sun as I set off down the track at 7.25am. More sand dune & ridge walking, lots of birds about, actually felt good to start with. Caught up with Ambles further on near some huge boulder, he had gone the wrong way & was returning to the track. We see more kangaroos, one of them kept staring at Ambles, hop along, stare, hop along, stare then dash right across the track in front of him. I saw yet another snake that was warming up on a flat granite top. Looked like a tiger snake, quickly slithering away back into the bushes. After 2 hours, we arrive at Light Beach carpark. Have a break, use the toilets. 2 cars turned up. One couple went down to the beach, the other couple were taking a walk along a walk trail. The lady was keen to know what track we were hiking, again amazed & impressed when we told her we started 8 weeks ago from Kalamunda.

 

The Bibbulmun Track follows some of this walk trail they were taking a walk on, a bitumen path. We missed the first Waugal turn off & found we had missed it when we walked the long way around & met the marker for north bound hikers. Almost walked pass the next one off the bitumen path as it is partially hidden by the bushes. It’s a narrow foot wide sand path with all the bushes growing over it. Great track for snakes to be lurking in! I preferred the bitumen path. We ended back on that path bumping into the couple again. The lady asked how many more days we had & wished us luck. From there I guess I was running out of stream & the warm sun was draining my energy. The flies again were pretty awful so we wore our head nets to keep them off our faces. We cross over private land before getting to Mt Hallowell. The first big hill climb in quite some time. This area has the most massive boulders I’ve ever seen, they were so huge! I like to do the side trips to the lookouts & there is two going up. Ambles was feeling tired & kept going up slowly to wait for me at the Hallowell summit trail. I ventured onto Monkey Rock not far upwards, out onto large flat granite slabs. It was cool & breezy, the views amazing. It was a 360 degrees of views stretching back far from where we came up the coast to where we were heading to, farmlands below & the trees growing up the side of Mt Hallowell. One of those spots where you could sit & soak up the views with a cuppa! 🙂 I continued along, passing a guy walking northwards. He had just started in Denmark, walking to Walpole. The climb was really starting to wear on me, so many large rocks to navigate over the track. At times it was confusing where the track continued. The bottom of my feet were hurting so the rocks & boulders did not help. I get to the almost top where Ambles had been waiting awhile. He goes, “Oh, I checked out the summit trail but it’s no good! The trees are in the way & there’s no views! You will be disappointed. I’ll amble on down.” I said I wanted us to walk down together so he said he would wait. I left my pack & went to the summit. Halfway up I come to a large slab of rock with trees covering the view. Well, this was the ‘summit’ Ambles had come to! The continued track wasn’t obvious but was to the right so I continued along & arriving at the actual summit over huge granite tops with 180 degrees view back where we came along the coast & farmlands. Not as good as Monkey Rock but nice nevertheless. I shot back down to find Ambles had already gone ahead. Was not impressed at all! Had to continue on my own for awhile trying to work out where the track went. Came across Ambles waiting halfway down. More rocks & boulders, the track started going up again! I was so annoyed & tired, my feet were hurting walking on this terrain. We meet two ladies on a stroll coming down, it’s already past midday & our progress has been very slow. In fact, Ambles has been enjoying Ambling today & doing well while I was suffering. I had drank all my water in my bladder, luckily I had collected extra water from Tim & Jules in my bottle but only like 600mls. We still had about 9kms to do. I stopped & emptied my bottle water into my bladder at the bottom of the hill in a thick haze of mozzie central. The evils kept trying to bite me as I hurried up & set off after Ambles.

 

The worst was over, no more hill climbs. Now we were on the outskirts of town with road walking & 4WD tracks. Ambles stopped at a perfect seat in front of Wilson Inlet. We had some tuna & crackers while dog owners came by. The dogs hanged around us as we had food, one very fat Beagle cross slurped up the tuna I had dropped on the ground. The dog hovered around us & the owner was getting annoyed with the dog, kept calling him to come but the dog wouldn’t bulge waiting for more food to drop! Eventually the dog trotted off. Ambles didn’t have much water either but there was nowhere to get water until we got into town so we were careful not to drink ourselves dry. We follow the Inlet edge for awhile then head back onto streets, passing beautiful looking homes. One guy was mowing his lawn & ran it over some water retic or something, water went squirting into the air & down the driveway onto the road. Ambles considered for a moment to race over & fill his water bottle from this instant fountain! Then decided to just move on. Hey – the trail provides again!😀 It was tedious walking to the rivermouth, then a kilometre along the river into the town centre. Ambles was fed up, we started 6.30am & got to the Denmark pub by 3.10pm. It had turned out to be a longer day than even the Peaceful Bay to Boat Habour. I was so tired, I couldn’t even walk properly as my feet were hurting so much. I had the bad case of ‘hiker hobble’. We grabbed a pint of beer at the pub. They weren’t serving any food so I had to hobble over to The Bakery, grab us pies & bring back to the pub. I wanted their amazing Lamb & Rosemary Pie but they were sold out. So just had a normal beef pie. There hardly seemed a point in showering yesterday as I smelt absolutely terrible, sweaty & stinky central. Tim & Jules were still in the area, still camping at Parry’s & been 4WDriving around the area. They stopped in to share a beer with us. I was so thankful for Tim driving me over to the visitor centre so I could sign the book register & collect our last box of re supply.

 

 

We normally stay in town but this time we were staying at Casa Libelula run by Jacko & Annie a Bed & Breakfast 20 kms out. Jacko came to pick us up & take us back to their home. A beautiful home on big property with Sheep walking around, Alpacas, chickens, roosters, 2 gorgeous dogs Luci & Belle. Two other guests are staying, friends of Annie’s that are returning home from a wedding in Manjimup. We have a lovely bedroom. I flopped onto the bed & it felt really good for my feet, I reluctantly got up to shower & start washing clothes. Then it was dinner time as Annie cooked up a home meal of lasagna with garlic bread, potatoes, veggies & salad. Followed with sticky date pudding with ice cream & cream. Jacko loves to talk hiking & chatted away about trails he had done, his gear – got a room full of hiking gear! Showed off all his fuel & cooking stoves – quite a number of different ones! The ladies had me join them in a card game. Stayed up way past hiker bedtime. I think it was after 9pm by the time I was in bed. Really very tired. So glad tomorrow is a Zero day.

 

Snake sightings: Ambles 4, Rose 5.5.