2026 Great South West Walk
Portland Temperatures
In choosing to do the Great South West Walk we could have chosen any time of the year but the key factors in our decision included Gill being able to get leave from her work, and my plans to do additional walks later in the year so Autumn looked like the best choice. We also tried to avoid school holidays and this includes Easter as it means that there will be less traffic on the road and potentially less people on the trail.
We were originally looking at the last half of March however the daily temperatures were still a bit hot for our liking, in fact as I write wrote post 24 March 2026, the forecast for Portland Victoria (trail head) was 25 ℃ but by pushing the start date back a month the max/min temperatures drop a couple of degrees to a more reasonable level with night time temperatures being around 12℃. In addition the rainfall days bump up a bit but is still out of the winter peak so overall we are still happy with the weather patterns. So what it came down to time wise was Mid-late April which is when we are starting our walk.
Distance wise this walk will be the biggest walk that I have done in a number of years and given I will be just on 12 month post hip replacement I wanted to take it ‘easy’. By easy I mean not trying to do 30+km days. On this particular walk you are covering either 251km or 263km depending on which option you choose along the southern half of the walk and we have opted for the 263km version which will, if things aren’t going well, allow us to change to the shorter distance and in doing so save a day. We have scheduled in a rest day in Nelson to allow time for us to physically recuperate and to finalise and publish the first on trail podcast episodes for this trail. For those days that we are on trail we will be averaging 19km/day.
Note: We are paying close attention to whats happening in the Middle East at the moment as we will have a 1000km drive to and from the trailhead so we need to be able to purchase petrol to get us there and home! I haven’t gone as far as identifying an alternative walk but it’s in the back of my mind just in case.
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In choosing to do the Great South West Walk we could have chosen any time of the year but the key factors in our decision included Gill being able to get leave from her work, and my plans to do additional walks later in the year so Autumn looked like the best choice. We also […]