11km walk

Today, quite early, we abandoned the children and went for a little 11km stroll.

A total of 14? of us (mostly) met at our place and car pooled.  First stop with the cars was the car park at JC slaughter falls.  We left two cars there and squeezed into the remaining two cars and drove to... Well we were supposed to drive to some pony club out in the Gap somewhere but the route planning was a bit light and we ended up de caring in some random street.  It was then decided that we should have been on the other side of a creek.  Some time was spent on debating and researching options.  A couple of us were keen to walk across a big pipe that traversed?  Straddled? the creek but the majority, in keeping with the election fever that is sweeping Queensland voted that idea down.  I think this is actually Campbell Newman's battle ground as we saw lots of posters referring to him or encouraging us to "keep Kate".

Eventually we were underway.  This is no stroll in the park.  A cracking pace was set and I struggled to keep up.  Psychologically it is really not good to be at the back but gee it's hard to catch up once you are behind.  Luckily it was not long before we ascended a huge steep hill and I was able to overtake a couple of the girls and also the group re formed at the top.  Unfortunately two of the girls got so far behind on this hill that we abandoned them.  A decision that was to come back to haunt us later.




My photos are from the easy bits because on the hard bits I was too stuffed to use the camera.

I have new appreciation of the effort that Megan and the other walkers put in.


The hills are alive to the sound of walkers, joggers and mountain bikers.  As I said no walk in the park as you have to watch you are not mown down by a cyclist.

We proceeded up hill and down dale? dail?.  Naturally we would complain about it being too hard to go up hill and when we were going down hill we would pretty much agree that going down was harder than going up.  I was somewhat disappointed that there was no support for a mutiny to take a short cut to the coffee shop that lay tantalisingly at the top of Mt Cootha and which we (in) conveniently scooted around.

Now I mentioned some grief associated with abandoned team members.  Well Ainsleigh (Erin's sister) was one of the members who fell behind.  No phone.  No map.  She took some advice from cyclists and joggers and made her way to JC slaughter falls.  Meanwhile Erin and Manfred went back to find her.  We found her and MMSd Erin this picture to set her mind at ease.



If I do this again, I will need to get new shoes as I found that on the down hill sections, my toes would be pushed forward and jammed into the front of my shoes.  I contemplated super gluing my heels into the shoes to prevent this but I had not brought any super glue so that was the end of that idea.

I am now lying on my bed and my toes are aching, my shins are aching, my calves are aching.  Mel come over and give me a massage!.