June 16, 2021

Days km: 16.6km
Total km: 158.8km

In the morning I left my pack at the shelter and sauntered down the flat 1.4km off trail to the North Bannister service station. There used to be a Roadhouse located here, but it has been closed for quite a few years now. A real shame because I could have done with some real food and a hot shower. There is not a great deal of things available at the servo, which seems like a missed opportunity to me. They do hold on to food parcels for hikers though, for a small fee. I stocked up on lollies and chocolate which was all they really had. As it was my breakfast was a delicious cold coke and a warm sausage roll of dubious age, which I devoured as I sat at the only table there. I procrastinated a fair bit, it was warm in the servo and I was able to charge my phone.

The walk today was tough. The trail wasn’t especially hard or anything, I was just not feeling it today and was pretty low on energy. I think this was my body saying “Dude! Slow down!” due to the fact I had walked 60km in the last two days, which body was definitely not used to. Or it could have been the sausage roll…

The trail was also pretty meh. Lots of fire road walking and the 16 or so km felt way lot longer than it was. White Horse Hills shelter was lovely though, it had just recently been renovated and had a shiny new covered seating area and firepit. I was joined by 3 other hikers there and we chatted around the roaring fire well into the night. It was a nice, positive finish to what had been an ordinary day. I’d say White Horse Hills has my vote for favourite shelter on the trail so far.