2020 The Great North Walk
A full day of planning!
It’s now less than two weeks until the start of my trip on the Great North Track and as such my posts will become more frequent in the lead up to the trip. For the first time in over a year I managed to spend almost all of yesterday attached to my computer doing last minute logistical planning. Any long distance hiking trip takes a fair deal of effort to plan but doing a trip in 2020 adds an extra special set of requirements. For both my and Gill’s benefit, I will leave her with a detailed itinerary of the trip so she knows where I am with a high degree of confidence at any given time. Cross referencing with my Garmin InReach Explorer+ Plus helps greatly.
As part of the COVID-safe planning, the NSW Government requires submitting a trip intention form outlining your plans. This means in the event of an outbreak, they can track you down. Submitting this form took me about four hours as it requires firm accomodation details. While competing the form, I discovered my night-two accomodation choice, the one and only hotel stay of the trip, was a no-go as it wasn’t taking bookings. This has added around 13 km to the second day of the trip. It’s just lucky day two was originally planned as a short day of 15 km which has now become just on 28 km. I know from personal experience that day two of any trip is where I struggle, hence the planned short day. Day three is now my shortest day but I need to get through day two first!
In addition to completing the trip intention form, I also submitted a ‘Crown Land form’. Again it’s partly for COVID reasons, as well as third form for staying in State forests. While I was at it I also booked accommodation for the two nights I will be staying in commercial campgrounds and tracked down the information I need for the trip across the Hawkesbury River. Mmmmm $160 for a water taxi or $8.50 for a ferry – which will I choose? Both are still an option but I know my likely response to this question.
As someone who swings between ‘OCD’ and ‘messy’ (Gill is rolling on the floor laughing right now), the image in this post is about as messy as my desk gets. I must own up here, I’m not so organised in the rest of the house. As I shut up shop for the evening, my desk is now back to its usual clean self.
It’s now less than two weeks until the start of my trip on the Great North Track and as such my posts will become more frequent in the lead up to the trip. For the first time in over a year I managed to spend almost all of yesterday attached to my computer doing last minute […]