26th September 2017

Lavender Hill = 518km
Peace Valley Ranch, Mulmur.

It’s time to move on sadly as we kind of fell in love with 21 North B&B. Our host Jean-Claude was really good company and took care of us like family almost, his breakfasts were just outstanding. Freshly prepared Fruit Salad, Fresh Fruit juice of your choice, choice of Omelettes (various fillings) or Scrambled or Soufflé to die for. All personally prepared with no store bought preprepared stuff added. He drove all over the place early morning so we could drop off our hire car at our daily end point then took us to our start point for the day. He then had to rush home to prepare breakfast for his other guests. We cannot thank him enough.

Now to the serious stuff, it was still warm at 21C but partly cloudy and forecast max of 28C. We set off down a beautifully manicured path around Nottawasaga Bluff to the designated Camping site, which was good but once again a fair trek downhill to get water. I had originally hope to camp here but saw that water was not close so we chose not to camp. The last thing we wanted was to go on a hike for water after a 25km+ hike with full backpacks. The source of water was a beautiful stream and I would have been tempted to “Stealth camp” closer to it if I was camping.

Once off the bluff and after a short road section it was over a massive stile and down a beautiful wide trail beside a couple of huge fields with Maize growing in it. At the end of these fields it was over another huge stile hand a right and along the edge of the escarpment through some fabulous woodlands for a while. Sadly this came to an abrupt end with some very tough going as the trail was now was on a very overgrown, cambered slope with mixed footing in the long grass that we just could not see where to place our feet. After about 1km we finally broke out of this and it was back to good walking terrain again.

Back onto a short gravel road section before doing a brief loop through a new piece of bushland that the Bruce Conservancy has bought. Then back onto the gravel road again up and over a hill where we joined a busy bitumen road going up yet more hill before getting back into woodlands again. Yet again this was a beautifully maintained piece of trail leading downhill to the Noisey River, which was a good strong flowing river with a decidedly wonky bridge over it. After coming downhill there is always a corresponding uphill and today was no exception. There was a very steep exit from the river then up a very long gully, thankfully on fabulous wide easy walking track. The slope eased a bit but we kept meandering up the scarp following the valley around the scarp. We crossed quite a few little streams running into a series of lakes beside the trail. As it was warm work going up the hill, we again stopped and doused ourselves with this amazingly clear cool water. Finally on the top of the scarp the trail kind of leveled off but it was replaced by a series of rock hopping bits beside the numerous crevasses along the scarp edge. We encountered a couple of Chipmunks belting out their warning calls and one was bold enough to sit there scream it’s heart out while we videod and photographed it’s performance. Now we were onto the final run in to our rendezvous with a last bit of road work.

I had a bit of a panic when I went to call for our shuttle and my phone had “No Service” but just as we were approaching our rendezvous I got a signal and called for our pickup. A short 10 minute ride and we pulled into our digs for the night, A real live working cattle ranch. We have a room that is part of a huge timber extention of the main Ranchhouse. Looking forward to dinner with the crew tonight.