Notes:
We
decided to walk the Burchell Trail over the Grand Final long weekend. This
is a grade 3, 35km walk starting at Friday's Camp Ground, with our first
overnight at the Old Mill, and then staying at the Little River before
finishing at the Boar Gully Camp Ground. We noticed that the
reported kms for this walk varied from measuring using google maps and the
reported distance of 39kms.
As we were 2 adults and 3 children, including a
baby, we were training for a six day walk at Wilson's Prom over Cup
weekend, particularly for our 4 year old boy. To make it easier, we
did a car shuffle each day to reduce the number of kms and to avoid
sections of the trail we had walked before. It also meant we didn't
carry our camping gear, except for the short distance into Old Mill, as we
weren't ready for that much exertion!
On the first day we walked the entire distance from Friday's to Old Mill,
of about 10.5kms, a very big day for our 4 year old. On day 2 we
walked three separate sections - 1. we took a short cut from Old Mill to
our car parked on Saw Pit road (just under 1km), 2. from Geelong-Ballan
Road to the climb above Stony Creek Picnic Ground (about 3kms), 3. from
McLeans Highway to Little River (about 3.5kms). All these separate
sections did halt the momentum of the walk, but being Grand Final day we
had the opportunity to check the score at least. All in all we
walked about 7.5kms. The final day we avoided the walk along McLeans
Highway, and then walked from Quarry road to Boar Gully, which was about
8.5kms, and a nice change from the interrupted walk on day 2.
Overall it was a great experience and prepared us
well for Wilson's Prom! Having seen many sections of the walk
previously we were surprised to see how lovely the sections we hadn't seen
before were, particularly on day 1.
|