June 27th 2021

Days km: 19.6km
Total km: 361.2km

A storm was brewing on the horizon and the forecast was looking grim, and my shins ached something fierce. The signs were there and that voice inside my head whispered “Stay just one more day, dude. Another day off would be awesome. Think of all the chocolate milk you could drink?” But screw it, I’m not a fast hiker, but by hell I’m an impatient one. I needed to get moving. I could feel the pull of Albany all the way in the distance and the thought of sitting around for another day almost made me sick. Or maybe that was the leftover pizza I had for brekkie…either way I needed to get back on the trail.

I took a handful of aspirin and got moving. I decided to take a shortcut to get back on the trail. The official track would have me backtrack about 3 to 4km to get back to the trail junction whereas I could walk along Mungalup Rd and meet the track as it crossed the river, saving me walking 3km I had already done. It was a fairly pleasant walk, with a bike path along most of it and I had phone reception, so spent the 3km listening to my wife provide commentary on my eldest daughters soccer game.

I can’t recall much of the walk to Yabberup to be honest, it was a pleasant undulating walk with no real climbs, although there was a nice steep bit just before the shelter. The huge storm that was supposed to arrive in the morning never eventuated, but the sky got darker and darker and rain looked imminent. Every now and then I would try to quicken my pace to beat the rain, but my shins, muted as they were by the aspirin, would bark their displeasure. I accepted that I’d be getting drenched when the skies eventually opened up and kept at my fairly sedate pace. As it was the rain arrived 5 minutes after I made the shelter.

Joel and Meg were already set up at camp. They had even gotten a fire going, but the rain soon put paid to that. Joel was actually on and end to end to end. He lived in Denmark and joked he was too cheap to pay the bus fare home so had decided to just walk it. Meg was on her first thru hike and was moving pretty damn fast. I am super envious of those who can hike at a fast clip.

I took some more aspirin hoping to quieten down my shins, which always got worse as soon as I cooled down. With the rain bucketing down there was no prospect of a fire so it was in to bed early.