Oh no another early start, Isla managed to wake me up by leaving the door open, good thing as it was 7am and we where meant to be leaving at 7.30. So once I had got dressed, god it was cold, I gave Romy a shake and was told to leave him alone. Went and managed to eat some toast, for some strange reason seem to have a hangover, but Todd had the perfect plan to cure it with a ‘heart-pumping’ hike to The Pinnacle.
So after driving up to the car park we set off on a nice 2.6km walk, the best thing was that we were the only people who were out at this time of day, (can’t imagine why), but I would not want to do this walk even when well during the heat of the day as you are in a valley with some shade until the sun started to come over the ridge. By the time we got to the top was feeling pretty knackered, but the views are so good it was worth it.
Todd then said we could all take a rest and then head back down when we wanted to, Romy was having a lie down in some shade and both me and Isla were sat in the sun. Once started to head back down got chatting with Todd about traveling and the different places which I had been to and places he liked, when we got near to the bottom we meant a huge group who were coming up the canyon so Todd showed me the other track which leads down to the car park through the bush but was not that well marked.
We then headed off to the coast stopping at Warrnambool which is at the start of the Great Ocean Road, we had a stop here for lunch, going on Romy’s suggestion we went to a place called Noddle Box for lunch, this turned out to be actually very good for lunch. We then made our way on to the main road, stopping at various places of interest, first up was Bay of Islands, then Bay of Martyrs, we then stopped at London Bridge wher we got to hear the story of what happened when the land bridge connecting to it collapsed. We then got to the 12 Apostles, here me and Romy decided to go on a 10 minute helicopter ride over the Apostles, which was amazing, neither of us had been in a helicopter before and Romy is scarred of heights. I was able to sit in the front and the views you get are so good.
After this bit of excitement which left both of us grining for a while we headed back up the road to Loch Ard Gorge, and got to go down on the beach which was there, before heading back to the main viewing area for the Apostles and sunset, which was really good, I ended up taking way to many pictures of sunset. We then waited around for a while as Todd had told us that the Little Penguins come in on the beach, just as we were about to leave Todd looked out to sea and was able to spot the groups coming in so 10 minutes later the first group arrived, was fun watching them trying to get out of the surf and then up the beach.
We then headed to the coastal ‘township’ of Princetown where we were staying overnight, in the only hostel, this is a place which has only 9 full time residents, the pub is also the restaurant, the bottle shop, and the hotel. The post office is also the general store, the petrol station, and coffee shop. How some place like this can be called a township I don’t know, it even has a mark on the map the same as Warrnambool which is about 10000 x larger. It is a hamlet not a township, or even a village.
But at least the dinner they put on for us was good.
Tags: Adventure Tours, Bay of Islands, Bay of Martyrs, Earn Your Stripes, Great Ocean Road, Isla, Princetown, Romy, statravel, The Pinnacle, Twelve Apostles, Warrnambool
