Start: Nowra
Finish: Gerringong
Distance: 21
Total: 546
Today’s walk was a total change from the route I planned to walk. As I explained earlier, I always do a review of my planned route the night before I walk. Last night I discovered I had missed the fact that my plan had me walking about 7-8 miles on the freeway; something I might get away with in an emergency but I’m not going to do it if I have another option. So I revised my route to walk down backroads to a completely different destination, which added 8 miles to my day, but now I’m 8 miles farther along than I had planned at this point and will have a couple of shorter days coming up to show for my effort.
I left my motel at 9:00 with a 4:30 ETA to my new destination, the Gerringong train station 21 miles up the coast. Part of the day I was walking through Seven Mile Beach National Park. While this sound really interesting, in reality I spent half the day walking through a dense forest, probably a quarter mile at most from a seven mile long beach, and never once saw the water. However, after getting past the park, I made a steep climb into a small town just outside the park and got an amazing view back at the shoreline and the forested National Park I had just passed through.
I made it to the Gerringong train station with 30 minutes to spare and caught the train to Wollongong, which was an hour ride, where I’ll spend the next three nights at the Coniston Hotel (pub). The accommodations here are super nice; probably the best I’ve had so far on this trip.
Tomorrow I’ll catch the train back south to Gerringong and continue walking toward my hotel room here in Wollongong which will take two days to walk.
That puts a wrap on Day 33. Thanks for reading. JB.
