TravellingStrom

It is looking good for the day, mostly sunny at the moment. But, first off I headed off down to the telecenter to see about internet access. It was quite good, and only cost $4 per hour and very fast, so i spent 3 hours uploading and checking email etc. One great email I received was from a chap called Steve. Remember that seat I found on the side of the road on the way to Freemantle, well he got it back and in his words “I and my bike thank you from the heart of our bottoms”, so that was a good outcome 🙂
There were a few showers of rain during the above time, but not for long or very heavy. After some lunch I headed off to look at the tingle trees. There is a track on the way to Denmark a few kms from Walpole which goes up through the mountains and has a lookout, a giant tingle tree and a circular pool, so I was going there. As you can see it is dirt, but it was hard packed and although wet, was only a little bit squirmy underfoot.

Then first stop was the lookout over the inlet and bay of the coast, you can see the side stand sinking a bit in the mud

I parked up later at the giant tree area, but next to a baby.

Then while reading the information in a shelter, it started to rain, so I waited for a while and these are self explanatory.

After 10 minutes I started to walk anyway, it was only light drizzle by now, the giant tree is a 1km round trip, but it is massive and in this photo the whole inside is gone with just the buttresses holding the tree up, all of what you see in the photo is the same tree, except me of course! And the second photo is from the other side, as you can see the rain is a bit harder, I hid inside the tree for a while.

By the time I got back to the bike it was sunny again, which was good as I had 12km of muddy trail to follow, I took it very easy and eventually arrived at the circular pool, which is just where a river enters an upper pool and the water goes around in a circle. It was quite nice to look at though.

Then it was on to the Valley of the Giants and I paid the $8 for the tree top walk which was quite nice and fun because it swayed all over the place, which made some visitors a bit anxious 🙂 At the highest point we are 40m above ground with a great view of what is up there.

Then once on the ground, I went and did it again, this time I managed it without the crying kids although towards the end it started to rain a bit. Then on the ground I went on the Empire walk, just a ground level walk showing a number of old big trees.

On the way back to Walpole I turned off onto Coalmine Beach Rd for the Knoll scenic drive along one of the inlets, there are two leading to the ocean.

Coming back into town and after filling the tank I spotted this ute, no way is anyone stealing that blokes tools 🙂

Not long after pulling up at the motel there was an almighty noise as all these chook chasers turned up, with a support vehicle.

As it turns out they were all mostly Ulysses club members from the west coast who were doing an annual 4 day dirt bike ride through the forests, the organiser was 70, that is him in the yellow shirt 🙂

I was offered a beer and chatted for a while then two of the wives turned up, they were riding Yamaha Fazers, but only on the bitumen of course.

We then had more beer, a feed and played some darts up at the pub, it was a great evening.

The pub was quite nice and friendly, it even had a few more dicks in the bar besides me, the first one is a whales and the second is cut from a tingle tree and was like that naturally

I stayed a bit longer the others chatting with the staff, Ross, Lorraine and Graham, before heading to bed. Graham reminded me of that Irish chap called Bernie from Black Books.

Day – 78km
Trip – 14,863km
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