Tag Archives: Scenery

Day 2 – San Miniato to Gambassi Terme – not so long, but hard

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Tuesday 13 May 2025 – Extraordinarily, given the rigours of yesterday, everyone was in reasonable shape as we convened for breakfast, which was a buffet affair with plenty of variety, so we were all able to eat our fill in preparation for the day to come.

One thing about the day was somewhat daunting – the last 4km of the walk.

This would be twice as long as yesterday’s final climb and ascend twice as far. I wasn’t looking forward to it. Another thing we knew about the walk was that there were effectively no coffee stops (there was one, but it was about three km in, so not particularly useful as a rest stop). So we had to get ourselves some food for a picnic lunch, which we got in a local store.

Off we went, then, through San Miniato, which is a place of monumental architecture

and stunning views.

Even as we walked along the road out of town, it was clear that the locals had some fantastic scenery to look at.

The expected length of the day’s walk was 24km – less than yesterday (praise be), but still a non-trivial amount of walking.  We started off along the road

and a couple of things were borne in on me. Firstly, that there were more walkers/pilgrims out than we’d seen the day before;

and secondly, there were a lot more ups and downs that we’d had to deal with the day before. There was also a lot more road than I had expected; we covered a full 6km – quarter of the day’s walking – on the road, up to a point where I began to wonder if tarmac was going to be the surface for the whole day, and also to get a bit fed up with the amount of up and down. I suppose I should have looked at the profile of the route (first photo) to realise that it was “Inca flat”, a phrase we’d learned in South America that described terrain that ends up the same altitude as it started, but isn’t actually flat at all. You can see from the sawtooth in that profile that this was what we had to deal with today.

Eventually, though, we left the road and joined a much more rural track.

There was still a lot of up and down, though. The track became slightly rougher as we went along

but the going was good; and the scenery was stunning.

The scenery had a role to play in trying to distract me from the rather tedious procession of ups and downs the track took. There was a fire in the distance, which we hoped was a controlled blaze.

We’d read that this route offered “no services” (hence the buying of our picnic lunch) but about 8km in we came across something that called itself a “punto sosta” for the Via Francigena:

a little cabinet with things that suffering walkers might appreciate – pain killers, bandage, disinfectant and so forth.

A charming idea – and one located by a picnic table for the poor sufferer to rest at.

We used the table for a short break, and then ceded it to a German couple who we’d seen the previous day; the gentleman is finding the walking rather trying – and I believe that they hadn’t realised that there were no rest stops on this route, either.

We pressed on and the track led past a wooden sculpture recognising 20 years of the Via Francigena to Rome.

Among the grass it says “20 years road to Rome” with the figure of a pilgrim and his faithful dog. Actually when we found it, it said “20 years oad to Rome”. Jane found the “r” and balanced it in place for the photo.

Next to it was a very amusing sight – an info board pointing out the delights of the view back to San Miniato, except that in the interim, trees had grown up to obscure the view the board purported to explain.

The track by now was a bit rougher still, but the scenery continued to be as much of a distraction as scenery can be. As well as stunning views, we passed a building, presumably a farm building, which had many chickens and other poultry outside

and a very charismatic cockerel posing in the middle of the yard.

Very shortly thereafter we passed two interesting and not unrelated sights: a signpost showing the distances involved in the whole Via Francigena, from Canterbury to Rome;

and a lady from New Zealand who was walking the whole route, but from Rome to Canterbury. That’s dedication, that is.

The track was becoming increasingly rudimentary,

and there were some stretches where mud made picking one’s route a matter of importance. We passed a donkey mill

now disused and repurposed for the storage of hay rather than anything else.

The track was rough and tedious, by this stage, still going up and down like a very up and down thing, but the scenery continued to be stunning, if one could be bothered to appreciate it.

The touble was, appreciating it was beginning to be very difficult. We found a shady place to stop and eat our sandwiches and it was at about this point – somewhat over half way – that my body decided that the goodwill it had extended to get me this far was used up and started to go on selective strikes. The mechanism that provided energy to the leg muscles clocked off; and the one that mitigated pain to the shoulders started a work to rule.

In the following photo of the lovely scenery

it is possible to see our destination for the day, Gambassi Terme.

and, as expected, it’s quite a lot higher than we were at this point. About 4km from our end point, the route started up,

and I noted the situation shown by S-cape’s interactive route map of the day.

to which my response was this.

The couple of kilometres after lunch were the worst. The couple of kilometres after that, they were the worst, too. After that, things went into to a bit of a decline. All three of us struggled for those last four km. We didn’t even make it all the way up to Gambasi Terme

as our accommodation, Ostello Sigerico was (mercifully) a kilometre or so short of the town. We were grateful to be able to stop. Jane and I collapsed into something of a daze for a while before cleaning ourselves up for an evening meal.

Given what feels like the hard work I’d put in to days 1 and 2 of this walk, I was a bit miffed, on checking in with the data collected by my Garmin activity tracker, to find that, although I’d undergone 434 minutes of activity yesterday and 350 today, only 7 and 5 minutes respectively were considered to have been “vigorous”. I have to tell you that it bloody didn’t feel that way inside my body.

As the name of  our accommodation suggests, it’s not a luxury hotel, but a hostel – towards the luxury end of these things, but a hostel nevertheless. (Sigerico was a 10th-century Archbishop of Canterbury who made a pilgrimage to Rome, following the Via Francigena and arriving in 990.) Our terms were half board, and the evening meal was very much a pilgrim meal – pasta followed by pork and beans. Basic, but nonetheless wholesome and tasty. We shared a table with some Francophone people, a couple and a single, who each, in their own way, were dedicating time in their lives to covering significant parts of the Via Francigena.

Tomorrow, we actually get the chance for a more relaxed day – about 15km of walking, although there’s quite a bit of up and down in it.

It will be interesting to see how our energy levels are. The target is San Gimignano,a UNESCO World Heritage site, so I hope we arrive with sufficient energy to go sightseeing around it. Stay tuned to see how the day turned out.

 

Lizard Island, Part 1

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Saturday 5 October 2024 – Yesterday, 4th October, marked the start of the last leg of our two-month trip around Australia, as we beat a fairly hasty Retreat from the Rose Gums Wilderness (see what I did there?). Our destination for the day was Lizard Island, a 10 km² chunk of the Great Barrier Reef, off the north-east coast of Australia. The name refers to a multi-island group, a National Park, and a resort of the same name. The main island is small, and the only ways to get to it are by boat or on a light aircraft; using the latter was our plan, a one-hour flight departing from Cairns airport. We had a mild attack of planning hiccups when it became clear that we didn’t know how to get from the Avis car rental return depot to the “General Aviation Terminal” whence the East Air flight would depart. Our Audley instructions were simply to “make our way” thither, but it looked like it was over 1km, which is a bit daunting when burdened by suitcases and backpacks. We were also not sure that we’d get away with our baggage as it was – probably overweight and possibly oversize. (I emphasise that I’m talking about our luggage, here, but two months of relentless tourism travelling meant that those adjectives also applied to us by this stage.) We had pre-empted problems by hiving off some of the heavier and less relevant items (including my drone) into separate bags for storage whilst Jane contacted the Lizard Island Resort and we learnt a couple of key things: firstly, the flight was with an airline called Hinterland (not East Air as Audley had told us); the second was that there was a transfer possible (which it was clear that Audley had not booked for us), but the nice lady on the other end of the phone was able to fix it.

So we scurried off into the gathering dawn and drove to Cairns, where Avis agreed that I hadn’t trashed their nice Camry and where we had time for a coffee before being collected and taken to Hinterland’s small but comfortable terminal.  I had a slightly tense moment when they weighed my camera bag; we’d been told that there was a 5kg weight limit on hand baggage, but they didn’t seem too fazed by my 11kg of camera and related stuff. I’m not sure what I’d have done if they’d objected.

We were shown upstairs into the lounge where we made idle chitchat with fellow passengers Susan and Michael from Denver, and later with a chap called Harry who was travelling out to Lizard Island to skipper the resort’s fancy fishing yacht. He gave me the tip to sit on the starboard side of the plane if I wanted to take photos of the Reef as we went, which of course I did.  So I sharpened up my elbows in preparation. Our plane turned out to be (yet) another Cessna Caravan, so I knew which seat to head for, from previous experience.

There were some clouds around, but both Jane and I managed some, OK loads of, photos as we flew to the island. Here are some of them.

Cairns
A tanker which has just dischaged something that looks vaguely unpleasant
Batt Reef
Elm Beach
Three Islands Reef
Boulder Reef
Rocky Islets Reef
North Direction Island

Lizard Island

The resort is part of the Relais et Chateaux group and so one would expect a lovely environment and great service. One was not disappointed. We were whisked away by buggy to lunch with a view

while our bags were spirited off to our cabin, which shared, with Thala Beach, the distinction of being practically as far away from the bar as was possible. but which made up for that with its view.

After all our schlepping round Australia, I had expected our two-day stay here to be an opportunity, to misquote Br’er Rabbit, to “lie low and do nothin'”. It almost immediately became clear that this, while possible, was not the probable MO of our stay here, as that very afternoon there was a “bat walk”; an excursion to view the island’s colony of flying foxes. Harry the boat skipper had mentioned back in Cairns that there was a research station on the island, part of the National Park and sufficiently distinguished to have hosted no less an eminence than David Attenborough in the past, so a visit there was an attractive option. It’s indicative of the quality of service of the resort that they were able to fix up a way that we could squeeze in a visit to the facility on the morning of our departure. There would also be an opportunity to do some snorkelling. This is something that I had previously set my face against, but I decided to Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway. I’d brought my waterproof camera with me, and I would therefore hope to get some worthwhile underwater shots while not making a complete arse of myself in the snorkelling group.

All of this activity did leave us some time to relax, but come 5pm, it was time to hunt the bats, so we went for a walk. Obviously. Our guide, Lauren, was the resident naturalist for the resort, and thus, as one would expect, was very knowledgeable about all sorts of aspects of the wildlife and environment here, and also some of the history.  We climbed “Chinaman’s Ridge”, which gave us a decent view over Watson’s Bay.

Why is it called Watson’s Bay? I hear you cry. Well, it’s named after Mary Watson, who in 1881 settled in a stone cottage built there by her husband, Robert Watson. About 20 years before, other stone buildings had been erected there by Europeans, Chinese and South Sea Islanders in order to process bêche-de-mer, which is the posh French name for sea cucumbers. Sadly, the location was one that was sacred to the aboriginal tribes who had been dwelling hereabouts for several thousand years, and they eventually took umbrage and spears, and attacked Mrs. Watson and the two Chinamen who worked alongside her. The Chinamen were killed, and Mary Watson fled, but died in the escape attempt; her courage and the dignity she evinced in her journal of the episode has etched this rather distressing (and disrespectful) episode into the public imagination, and the site – now just the ruins of the cottage and visible from Chinaman’s Ridge –

is now listed on the Queensland Heritage Register.

Back to the bats, though. The idea of the walk was to see the colony of fruit bats who hang out (see what I did there?) in mangrove thickets. It’s a small colony, about 200 strong,

of black flying foxes, which were rather unexpectedly at eye level rather than high in the treetops. The mangroves were so thick it was still difficult to get good shots of them though. They were preparing to go out to forage,

but there was other fauna to be seen,

Male Garden Sun Bird
Pacific Golden Plover

and flora – kapok fruits bursting into seed on some trees and with flowers still on display in others.

After the walk, we had dinner in the restaurant, hanging from the roof of which was a Sun Bird nest, with the female guarding eggs and looking out at the world.

My plans to spend the whole of today, Saturday 5th, doing nothing also failed to materialise. Since we were on Lizard Island, Jane had the idea of going out and looking for lizards. She had another item on her agenda, which was to look for her sunglasses, which she was convinced had fallen off whilst we were looking at the bats. She told the hotel reception about the loss, but they had nothing handed in. So once again, we went for a walk. Obviously.

Actually, we cheated slightly. As we were walking the path towards the airport, a buggy driven by the resort’s Experience Manager, Paul, drew up, and he offered us a lift part way – indicative of the level of service the resort delivers. Paul took us to the track we’d walked the previous day and Jane and I cast about for the exact spot where we’d been watching the bats.  We eventually found it, but there were only footprints; no sign of the sunglasses. We did get some lizard pictures, though – various differently-sized Yellow Spotted (or Argos) Monitor Lizards, with the largest being a couple of metres from head to tail.

We got photos of a couple of other creatures, too.

Great Egret (juvenile)
Bar-shouldered Dove

On the way back to the hotel, we passed a bar called the Marlin Bar.  It is part of the hotel but is open to the public (e.g. those who have arrived by boat and been fishing for the day), and so we felt it our duty to pop in and check it out. Over the bar is a replica of a huge (500kg) Marlin that had been caught at some stage and which, I believe, had been the catalyst for starting the Lizard Island Marlin Challenge, winners of which were listed at the bar. I should point out that all marlin caught are returned to the sea…

It was

a pool bar. Boom, tish.

We headed back to the hotel proper for a final drink, and while we were sitting at the bar we got another dose of the hotel’s excellent service; one of the receptionists came up and handed Jane her sunnies! One of the staff had been out at around midday to watch the bats, had noticed the sunglasses there and picked them up. Back at reception, two plus two were added, the result four was obtained, Jane’s presence (surprising, this) at the bar was noted and the sunglasses handed over, to loud cheers and much laughter. It’s not like they were posh or expensive, but nonetheless Jane was very grateful to all the staff concerned in getting the glasses back to her.

After dinner, we headed back to our cabin,

and so I thought I’d end the day with a photographic cliché, just for you.

We have one more day here, but relaxing during it is not where my head is; I have decided that I will go snorkelling, despite having set my face against ever suffering the faff, salt water and embarrassment that has dogged my previous attempts. So, instead of relaxing, I shall be spending the day psyching myself up for it. Stay tuned to see how it went, eh?

 

 

Atherton Tablelands – Not Rooful

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Thursday 3 October 2024 – Long Post Alert!!!!

Yesterday, 2nd October, marked two months since we left the UK on this fantastic trip; it also marked the time to travel to our penultimate destination – the Atherton Tablelands. This is an area somewhat to the south of Port Douglas, and we had a drive of some 2½ hours to get there. So we bade goodbye to the coast as we passed a reminder of this once sugar cane dominated area – these rail freight carriages, or “bins” as they were called, used to take the cane to Mossman when there was a working sugar mill there.

Although the railway is defunct, there are still many road signs and other indications which give the impression of a working system.

Just before we got to Mossman, we turned left and headed inland – and uphill. It was difficult to find a place to stop, to admire the views that we were presented with back towards the coast; but we eventually found a layby with only a slightly perilous walk along a twisty road with big trucks barrelling down it, back to a viewpoint.

We stopped for coffee at a village called Mount Molloy, which had a hotel which, by the sound of the loud banter coming out of it, could have starred in Crocodile Dundee, but only if the censor had been feeling lenient that day.  A café on the same side of the road had just turned off its coffee machine, and so we crossed over to the “Ahoy Molloy Coffee Ship”.

It billed itself as a “coffee and whole foods store”,

and, indeed had a variety of things for sale around the back.

We asked the exceedingly hippy barista what the chemical symbol meant on the front, and he told us that it was the caffeine molecule. Rough round the edges, but a cool place, actually.

The landscape changed dramatically as we left the rainforests of the Daintree; trees became much sparser

and the grassy spaces were dotted with a multitude of termite mounds;

the dense forests disappeared.

The agriculture changed, too.

Mango, avocado and banana crops could be seen from the road and the surrounding lands were exploited for farming.

Our planned lunch stop was in the town of Atherton, which has given its name to the surrounding countryside. Its name came from one John Atherton, who settled the area and introduced cows in 1879. Interestingly, the landscape once we’d climbed out of Port Douglas was flat, but once we officially arrived in the Tablelands, where one might have inferred flatness from the name, we saw many more rolling hills. We’d been two months in Australia and never visited a fish and chip shop; given that there was a reasonably well-reviewed one in Atherton, our lunch venue was an easy choice.

The fish and chips were very good; and on the walls were some clues as to perhaps why Australia has a similar occurrence of obesity as the UK.

Jane had, as ever, done her research on Things To See On The Way, and it was her work that decided us on travelling via this slightly longer route to get to our destination; Madam Tomtom in our car would have taken us back down the coast via Cairns – slightly shorter, and, as it turned out, probably a lot less interesting. Jane had spotted something called the Curtain Fig Tree; and since individual trees rarely get their own spot on Google Maps, we decided to take a look. The tree has signposts, its own car park and even its own National Park. We didn’t explore the National Park, but took up on the offer of a car parking spot and followed the signs, which led to a boardwalk

from which one could start to get an idea of the scope of what was on show. Which was astonishing.

The area is a sacred place for the Ngadjon-Jii people and an info board explains how this extraordinary scene developed. A fig seed was deposited by a bird in the crown of a tree. It was a strangler fig seed, so it grew roots down to the ground which also reached out, encircled and eventually strangled the host tree. The host tree (now effectively dead) then toppled, and ended up leaning on a neighbouring tree; the fig continued to send roots earthwards, which developed into the curtain one sees today. We’ve seen it compared to the “Tree of Life” in Avatar – actually more like the tree of death for the original host…

Jane had also spotted a “Platypus Viewing Platform”, which was in the pretty village of Yungaburra.

As we searched for a place to park, Jane spotted that there were Stone Curlews on the green – the female presumably incubating eggs in a ground nest, and the male strutting around nearby.

The male, by the way, was another disciple of the Phoebe Waller-Bridge side-eye school.

There was, indeed, a formal platypus viewing area, but looking out from it revealed only a turtle.

As a platypus viewing exercise, it was a turtle disaster.

It was then but a short journey to our accommodation, the Rose Gums Wilderness Retreat. We were slightly amused, as we drove towards it, that we were traversing farmland, but once we’d arrived and checked in to our (very substantial) cabin,

it was clear that we were in forestland once again. As darkness fell, Jane stood on the balcony with a torch [ in the rain, I may add – Ed ], seeking out wildlife.  She’s like that. Her persistence resulted in the sighting of a snake,

a (reasonably sizeable) common brown tree snake, which came down off our roof and was looking around on the ground outside for a snack of some kind.

Rose Gums doesn’t have a restaurant, and we’d prepared by buying all kinds of good food in Port Douglas on our way here. But we ended up taking gin and peanuts as our evening meal. Well, we’ll be back in the UK soon and having to go back to a healthy diet; we had some gin left over from our Port Douglas stay, and You Can’t Take It With You, You Know.

That was last night. Today was our time here, and we were booked on a full day “Nature Tour”, with a guide all to ourselves.  Accordingly, at 8.30am, along came the very energetic, up-beat and knowledgeable James

to whisk us off to, well, whatever we agreed would be a good place to be whisked off to. We gave him the task of finding us a cassowary and a tree kangaroo, and, to his credit, he didn’t blench, but instead told us he’d see what he could find for us.

First, though, we took photographic advantage of two features of the Rose Gums retreat: a feeding of rainbow lorikeets

and a hide from which one could see musky-rat kangaroos, or possibly musky rat-kangaroos (the sign was ambiguous) which are the smallest and the most primitive of the quokkapadewallaroo family. Rather than hop they scurry very rapidly which made things rather difficult for your photographer…

Interestingly, the hide enabled photography of some other interlopers, too; an emerald dove and a peaceful dove, both very prettily coloured.

It was good to have James on hand, since he could identify these birds. He is an inveterate birder, which enabled some great photos for us – see later.

Our first stop was Petersen Creek, somewhat upstream from where we’d failed to see any platypuses yesterday. Today?

There were at least two of them – interestingly much smaller than the ones we’d seen in Tasmania. On the same stretch of water, we saw a Pacific  Black Duck

and, in the surrounding woods, an arrangement which looks like a very comfy hotel room for a possum.

James then took us to see a nearby colony of spectacled flying foxes

and then walked us along the Peterson Creek walking trail in search of cassowaries and tree roos.  No luck with them, but he did find us some possums: the bum of a sleeping coppery brush-tailed possum

and a very cute pair of green ring-tailed possums,

who looked a bit uncertain as to whether we were good news or not.

After a coffee stop, we headed out to Mount Hypipamee through the typical Atherton Tablelands countryside

to a secret location, unvisited by the public and known only to several hundred birders; this was to be our final chance to see a cassowary.  It involved looking for a specific entry to a track through a type of forest called mabi forest“, mabi, being the indigenous name for the (annoyingly elusive) Lumholz Tree Kangaroo. Before entering it, James sprayed our shoes with anti-leech spray and warned us to be very careful of stinging tree leaves (the upper and somewhat moth-eaten ones in this photo)

brushing against which could prove anything from very painful – with the pain lasting for months – to, erm, fatal. It’s a member of the nettle family, with the neurotoxin sting being delivered by very fine hairs on the leaves and the fruit. Apparently, the fruit is edible once you remove the hairs, but I’m buggered if I’m prepared to try that out. Its aboriginal name is gimpie gimpie which translates as “ouch ouch” i.e. a big ouch. The things I go through to bring you this stuff, eh?

Did we see a cassowary? Did we see a tree kangaroo?

Nope.

Were we disappointed? Absolutely not. Birder Lore had led us to the bower of a bower bird.

As luck would have it, its owner was (a) in the vicinity, and (b) stayed still long enough for even me to get a decent picture of it.

A Golden Bower Bird – a rare species which figures high on the twitchers’ list, apparently. This is a young adult male, yet to achieve his full golden-ness of plumage.

There was much interesting tree bark:

and, to relieve the focus on fauna and flora, James also took us to see the crater lake of the local volcano, which was 50 metres deep and very impressive.

The route to our next stop took us past some more lovely Atherton Tablelands scenery

and into a real old Australian Pub called, quite accurately, The Big Pub, in Malanda,

where we had a very agreeable lunch (and possibly my last-ever taste of Castlemaine XXXX). Afterwards we went to the Malanda Falls National Park,

where we could see saw-shelled terrapins,

Wompoo Fruit-Doves,

and a Boyd’s Forest Dragon,

which was a great source of relief to James, who didn’t want Aaron to be the only one to show us one of these delightful creatures.

By this stage we were approaching the end of our tour, but we had one more moment of delight in wait for us as we headed back to our accommodation: a bird we’d seen as we departed the retreat but had failed to photograph, because it buggered off as soon as we hove into view. We saw it again on our return (or another one of the same type) and for some reason this time it stayed put.

It’s a Pheasant Coucal – this one a young adult male, apparently, and a very handsome chap he is, too. Apparently it’s rare for them to pose like this; James was so excited that he even wanted me to send him this photo, which I have done.

Aaand…that was it for the tour; no cassowary, no tree kangaroo, but we had a great time anyway, with a great guide, lovely scenery and some new wildlife to photograph (oh, and look at too, I suppose). So we bade goodbye to James, and, since the Rose Gums retreat doesn’t actually offer any internet to its cabins (it’s a Retreat, OK?) instead of catching up on Facebook we went for a short walk to find out more about the Rose Gums that give the place its name.  These are not floral versions of wine gums, they are

gum trees. Having hacked down a track, we thought that the above tree was the Giant Rose Gum that we’d read about in the information in our cabin; but we were wrong. This (the one on the left below) was.

It’s immense. You can’t really see that from the photo, even if I include someone for scale

or if I show you what the crown looks like,

but take it from me, it’s a big’un. OK, it’s a gum tree, and, yes, a very old one (estimated to be 600 years old). But why Rose? Jane took a revealing picture at the bole of the tree

which shows that the wood is of a definitely pinkish colour.

To end the day, Jane did her “look for wildlife in the dark and the rain” bit again, and spotted

a bandicoot! We’re honestly not sure what actual species of bandicoot it is, but it is the first of these marsupials we’ve seen (outside a stuffed example in a display case). That we’ve not seen one before is not really a surprise, since they’re strictly nocturnal and we’re not.

We have one more place to visit on this trip, and, if all goes according to plan, we’ll get there tomorrow. It should offer us a final chance to relax before we head back to the gloomy wet and cold of an English autumn, but maybe there will be some decent photos to share. Keep watching these pages to find out, OK?