Spent last weekend in the little town of
Yackandandah (like the word 'banana' it is easy to get carried away when trying to write it). Only about a 3.5 hours drive from
Melbs, near
Wadonga. The weekend was in aid of celebrating mum's 50
th and the grand plan included a bush walk in training for the
Camino Pilgrimage in Spain next year.
The dogs went off to the kennels for a mini break and husband and I jumped into the Forester and headed north. We met up with the family at the B&B we were staying in. Now to comments on the first B - the Beds were those weird foam core ones (no springs in the
mattress) which, after a couple of nights on it, I was not well sold on. The second B was less than desirable - Breakfast was cereal and toast (hello - I can have that at home!) and a cooked
breaky was extra. I thought the point of B&B's was that you got nice and special B's, not weird foam core ones and toast/cereal ones.
However, it did have a beautiful surrounding, garden full of birds and a pond full of frogs. Lovely green grass, smelling nice and clean. And the best part of all was having an
en suite!
Yay!
I'd forgotten how blue a sky can be when there's no pollution, and how many stars you can see at night when there's no light pollution.
We had dinner at the Star Hotel, a nice little pub where the boy who served us had a nice red stripe in his hair that matched mine. This pub was also the filming location for
Strange Bedfellows a Michael
Caton/Paul Hogan flick from 2004.
Saturday was the day of the bush walk. I had done
something to me knee at the gym earlier in the week so
was sporting a lovely knee brace. We drove to
Beechworth (20km from
Yack) and first walked around the gorge. A nice 5km walk, not too stressful, slight inclines. We picked up some lunch in the bakery and then headed off on another walk.
There were lots of mine openings from the gold rush days, some of which had mesh covers because they were on the track - walking over them was a little creepy.
This walk was much more of a hike - lots of hills and valleys. My knee was getting pretty sore, but seeing as I enjoy whinging this was OK. 15km later we got back to
Beechworth - I was absolutely rooted. I was tired and my feet were really sore. It was then I realised that I only had heeled boots to wear to dinner that night.
eep!
Dinner again at the Star Hotel, but we were mostly too tired to get drunk. I couldn't even finish my glass of
Moet. That's when I realised it was definitely bed time! Good old foam core.
The drive home on Sunday was nice and quick, despite having a bit of a stressful moment when my several cups of tea from breakfast caught up with my bladder. There was a m
oment when I really thought I might have to find a convenient bush on the side of the road - thank god that truck stop came up when it did! Best wee ever.