June 25th 2021

Days km: 22.2km
Total km: 341.6km

My shins hurt pretty bad so the walk into town was not fun at all.

I don’t recall much of it to be honest, pretty dull walking again. I did not like having no phone, so no music, no podcasts, no fracking map. Urgh!

The last section into town was on bitumen, which did not go well with my shins. This was bad. I’d looked up how to fix shin splints for it before my phone died and the recommended treatment was “stop doing the thing that caused it” which meant I’d have to stop walking. That’s not an option I want to take, as given my timeframe it would mean the end of the trek for me.

On the outskirts of Collie I grabbed a chocolate milk, which helped soothe my worries somewhat. Seriously this stuff is like crack for me at the moment.

Collie is a big enough town to have a McDonald’s, which was conveniently on the way to my accommodation and I couldn’t resist it. I had a big Mac meal, fully intending to go back and grab more food when I was done. As it was I barely finished it and the thought of more food made me feel a little sick. This was weird, but I had noticed it in Dwellingup as well. Maybe my stomach is shrinking?

I checked into the Black Diamond lodge which was basic, but really nice and then hobbled back into town to try and sort my phone situation. I looked for a wireless charger, thinking my phone might still charge that way but couldn’t find one anywhere. So I bit the bullet and bought another phone. Not ideal, but I didn’t think i had much of an option. It was a Samsung A21, not bad really, and it was on Telstra which was a bonus. I’m actually really lucky my phone packed it in when it did, because I don’t think I’d have been able to get a phone in any of the other trail towns. I really hoped I’d be able to charge my phone again though, otherwise I’ve lost all my photos and blog posts.

In the evening I headed to the pub next door, the Federal, and grabbed a chicken parmigiana. James was there, as was Geoff aka ‘Sailcat’. I was surprised to see him as I’d seen his entries in the logbooks and he was going pretty fast and was, I thought, far ahead of me. Turns out he had been in Collie for the last 4 days trying (in vain so far) to get over his shin splints…Ah shit.