Tag Archives: Walking

Landscapes, Wildlife and a Feeding Frenzy at Cradle Mountain

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Tuesday 10 September 2024 – When we looked out of the window this morning, it had clearly rained hard during the night, but it was difficult to tell if it was drizzling right now or whether the weather was just that air-borne moisture you get when you’re in a cloud. Anyway, it wasn’t bucketing down as we walked round the lodge’s lake to breakfast, and there was possibly even the hint of a lift in the weather.

On the basis of various weather forecasts, we decided that rather than wrap ourselves up in something warm and stay indoors, we should go for a walk. Not obviously, by any means, though.  Just down the road from our hotel is the Cradle Mountain Visitor Centre,

where we went to get our Parks Pass and also a ticket for the shuttle bus which would take us to one of the well-known walks in the area, a circuit round Dove Lake. The total cost was not small, but, as with the Russell Falls park, it was clear as we walked around that there was a lot of work involved in maintaining paths and other facilities, so it was money well spent.

The terrain we could see from the bus

underlined how wet the place was. Basically, we have been wet and cold since we left Hobart, and we asked the hotel receptionist if this was normal. She said, emphatically, that it was not; in the 12 seasons she’d worked in Cradle Mountain, this was the first time they’d had such consistent rain for such a long time – every day for two weeks.

The shuttle bus has a few stops en route to Dove Lake, the first of which was at the Ranger Station;

they were clearly expecting me and wanted to make sure that I stayed safe.

At Dove Lake, the prospects for spectacular scenery were a little less than uplifting

but since we’d made the effort (and paid the bus fare!) to get there and it was only drizzling, we grimly struck out on the 6km Dove Lake circuit. This is largely a well-maintained path

with steps to help with ascents and descents

and boardwalk to get you across the tricky bits. Every so often, the drizzle would stop for a few minutes, and one could begin to make out the reason that the area is called Cradle Mountain,

and the general scenery, whilst being exceedingly moist, was not unattractive.

As we worked our way along the path, the weather lifted a little more, the cradle became clearer to see,

and we could see that there was snow on the upper slopes of the mountains on the other side of the lake.

Every so often there was something to remark on, whether it be multiple Pandanus trees

or some extra highlights among the greens of the trees.

We reached the far end of the lake

and continued on the path, through an area called the “Ballroom Forest”.

It’s clearly a forest, and probably rainforest at that, but we couldn’t fathom the reason for its other name.

We noticed at this point that the top of the cradle was beginning to clear, and one could actually make out snow on the slopes.

The unrelenting treeness of the view gave way to rock at one point

though in the event it meant that one had to duck as one went past – there was a distinct lack of headroom.

We carried on, along paths that were easy to follow but more difficult to walk on – there were more uneven surfaces, and the unremitting rain of the previous days meant that there was, more often than not, a river running along the middle of the path, requiring fancy footwork for those, like me, who were not wearing boots and didn’t want wet feet.

The return half features quite a steep climb

at the top of which a pied currawong came to ask us why we were breathing so hard.

At about this time, the weather really did lift and we could see the cradle quite clearly as we looked back,

but the lump we’d just climbed over was getting in the way, and we wondered if we’d miss out on a clear view of the mountains before we finished the walk.  The clouds did swirl back in as we passed a boathouse

but eventually, our luck was in as we reached the point on the circuit where the Iconic Cradle Mountain Shot could be captured.

There are even instructions on a noticeboard as to how to post your attempt at the shot on social media. That’s how iconic the location is.

In the end, it was an enjoyable walk, as it ended with the sun almost shining, and there being no rain, so we were glad we had made the effort to get out. As we drove back to the hotel and I concentrated on avoiding the craters in the road, Jane suddenly yelled “wombat!”. At first, I thought this was a critique of my driving, but actually it was because there was, indeed, a wombat beside the road, so we screeched to a halt so we could take a closer look. This was my first-ever wombat,

much more interesting than the wallaby which was quietly lying a little further away wondering what all the fuss was about.

Not only did I see my first wombat in this area, but also my first-ever pademelon!

so we were very happy as we got back to the hotel.  We had a short rest before we had to go out again, on the day’s booked excursion to a place even closer than the Visitor Centre. As we drove there, we passed a couple of cars off to the side of the road, a sure sign that there was Something To See.  In this case, there were a couple more wombats, just grazing away beside the road. I got some video of one of them,

and we carried on to our activity, which was at a place called Devils@Cradle. I guess its name gives away what we’d find there:

Tasmanian Devils, an endangered species of marsupial found only on this island. We had booked to see them being fed, which happens late in the day, as they are basically crepuscular creatures, but we turned up early so that we could take a look around and see what other creatures were being looked after there.  These included Quolls, of two different sorts: Eastern Quoll

(also seen here in a dark morph)

and Spotted Tail Quoll.

These, like the Devils are (a) marsupials, (b) endangered and (c) nowhere near as cute as they look. All three creatures are ravenous meat eaters and not to be treated lightly; as far as they’re concerned, humans are just meat, and so trying to pet them is likely to end in tears, as in fingers being torn off hands. Each animal has hugely strong jaws – ounce for ounce stronger even than hyenas – and their jaws can gape extraordinarily wide, which helps them as they tear and rend. This one, though, was just yawning.

The Devils@Cradle centre, whilst undeniably a tourist attraction, is actually a serious scientific endeavour as part of conservation efforts concerning these creatures.  The Tasmanian Devils, particularly, are at risk, mainly because of human activity, killing them often out of fear (they can make a blood-curdling screeching sound if they’re in disagreement among themselves) or because they can be a threat to domestic animals. A result of this depleted population is a lack of genetic diversity, and a rather unpleasant – transmissible – cancer has struck a large majority of the Devil population. Devils@Cradle has a small but significantly cancer-free population of Tasmanian Devils to help preserve the species. Its decline is very unfortunate, because Devils have an important role to play in the environment; like hyenas, they can hunt but also clear up remnants of carcases left by other predators. Sadly, if these carcases are roadkill, the Devils themselves are threatened by traffic; in their eagerness to consume the carcase, they just pile in and will still be on the road as the next vehicle comes along…

The Quolls too are under threat from urban development and, particularly, from the feral cat population, so the establishment is also involved in maintaining a breeding population and managing reintroductions.

Devils@Cradle, though, has no government funding, so depends on visitors for its money. One of the attractions they offer is a chance to see the animals being fed. It’s a very well-organised and information-rich activity. In our case, our guide was Sarah,

seen here displaying the wallaby legs that she would be using to feed the Devils. She was very knowledgeable, engaging and informative about the creatures, the need for conservation and the work that the centre is doing.

If you are of a sensitive nature, I suggest you skip the rest of this post, as it features images of bits of animals being torn to shreds.

Still here?  OK, here are some still images of Devils being fed

(note the currawong, which is hanging around in case something is left over) and the quolls ditto.

Note that Sarah doesn’t just throw them the meat, because then they would just grab it and run for cover; to ensure they stay out for the punters, she attaches it to a hook so that the spectacle can be watched.

They may look cute, but, like the Bugblatter Beast of Traal, they’re very ravenous.

Here’s some video which might really put you off your dinner. You Have Been Warned.

It was a very interesting evening – informative and educational, albeit cold and wet as it rained towards the end of it, not that the animals cared.

So ended our day at Cradle Mountain. Tomorrow we head back east, for some R&R at Launceston in north central Tasmania. We have no formal activities booked but you can bet your sweet bippies that if it ain’t raining we’ll go for a walk. Obviously.

Camino Finisterre Day 13: Walkin’ back to Santiago, whoop-ah, oh yeah, yeah*

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Tuesday 14 May 2024 – Whilst we had a reasonably comfortable stay, the Hotel Millan is not a place I would recommend; any better days it might once have seen are many, many days ago. So we weren’t tempted to linger after breakfast, and in any case the weather forecast made a prompt start seem a good idea; cloudy and showers were the order of the morning, with the prospect of rain in the afternoon.

We set off just after 0830 in light rain, retracing our steps to Santiago whence we started on May 2nd.  We passed sights that I don’t remember from that walk, such as this dovecote

and some that I do, such as the impressive gates to the Pazo de Albariña,

which is some kind of a historical landmark.

The weather stayed gloomy, with occasional light showers, so when we walked through Ponte Maceira I was glad that we had seen it at its best on the way out to Finisterre. Nonetheless, I took a couple of photos, because it is a lovely village.

After Ponte Maceira, there is a longish climb up to Carballo, which is the high point of the day’s walk. (Coming the other way, you’ll remember, it’s also the high point after The Steep Bit, a decent example of the sort of mandatory component that makes Day One of any walk a bastard.) On the return leg back to Santiago it’s not so steep, and the ascent not so much, but it still tested my energy levels and, frankly, found them wanting. So I used photography to give me the excuse for some short rests on the way up.  For example, there was a beautifully red horreo to be admired,

and some decent scenery

which held out the tantalising possibility that the rain would stop.

In Trasmonte, we had the courage to walk past the tempting Casa Pancho, as we hadn’t quite done the qualifying distance after which a coffee stop is permissible. I looked in at Trasmonte’s intriguing Fisterra Bovine World, where I got a chance at a better shot at one of their sheds.

This is apparently a two-year project whereby thirteen different bovine breeds from all over the world will be fed and raised under the Galician livestock system, using feed typical of the area based on native corn, to measure the effect of the Galician System on each breed. Crikey.

Trasmonte features some photogenic corners,

and just beyond the village we passed the high point, which is more or less marked by a fonte.

The path then goes down, as is not uncommon after high points, and, in the case of this path, it goes down quite steeply (had I already mentioned this, maybe?).

It’s interesting that Google describes this path as “mainly flat”. I’d hate to take on something that it describes as “a bit of a hill”. Whatever, as the sun was now shining more or less reliably, it made for some attractive scenes on the way down.  It is a damp environment, as can be seen from the vast amounts of moss which adorn, well, pretty much everything.

At the bottom is a café called Bar O km 79, where we stopped for refreshments. I think its name stems from the distance from the bar to Finisterre. Whatever, a coffee was a welcome thing, and it meant that we were under shelter as a small spattering of rain swept through.

We pressed on

and it became clear that we were running into a stream of peregrinos who had set out that morning from Santiago.

It never became crowded with pilgrims, but the oncoming flow was steady and constant for several kilometres.

We passed another unusual horreo as we walked on.

It’s been noticeable that, starting around Negreira, the principal construction of the horreos has gone from entirely stone-built to stone-and-wood. This is a stone-and-wood one, as you can see, but the unusual thing about it is its base; typical horreos are mounted on stone “toadstools”, which serve to keep the rats at bay; this one simply has stone pillars, but of course there’s the ledge in place to make it impossible for rats to get at the riches within.

After a few more kilometres we came to our second stop, a bar called Os Arcos.  Whilst we got ourselves outside beer and pizza, an amusing little cabaret played out before us, involving the delivery of large gas cylinders.  With a huge din, this van pulled up.

Its mission was to deliver two full cylinders and take away two empties.  It would have been cruel and ill-mannered to video the troubles the driver had in unshipping the bars which hold the cylinders in place, but it was funny to watch – and very noisy. It involved a lot of hitting things with spanners and other bits of metal before he could get the cylinders out. He correspondingly had trouble getting the bars back into place as well before he drove off.  This video (if played with sound up) will give you some idea of the cacophony which surrounded this little vignette.

After resuming our journey, we passed a tulip tree in full bloom (something Jane tells me I’ve seen before, but not that I remember)

and the sun came out enough to make the scenery worth taking photos of.

The last of those is taken from the ascending path just a few kilometres from Santiago. Once again, I found it really hard work, even though it wasn’t all that steep; but we were rewarded at the top with our first sight of the iconic towers of Santiago Cathedral.

Slightly further on, one gets an even better view

and I was pleased to be able to see it whilst the sun was shining, something it wasn’t doing on our outbound walk.

The cathedral continued to dominate local streets as we made our way through the outskirts

and soon enough we were in the Plaza del Obradoiro

and shortly thereafter back at our hotel, the massive San Martin Pinero monastery building.

We’d walked the complete final stage today, covered 21km, and arrived in the sunshine, which was a nice way to finish our Camino Finisterre. It’s not been a classic achievement for us like completing the Camino Francés was last year – the weather and my digestive issues had intervened to make it a bit of a disjointed experience – but we still had a quiet sense of satisfaction.

What do I think of this Camino? I think it’s worth doing for anyone who has not visited Muxia and/or Cape Finisterre, which are both attractive, charismatic places, but probably less so for people who have visited these before. We found the endless eucalyptus plantations, and their aftermath (blasted earth and chewed-up trails) a bit tedious and depressing; it’s a shame that people’s livings depend on planting and harvesting this invasive species. The poor weather we had in places took some of the gilt off the gingerbread, for sure, although there’s a case to say that this is our fault for not having industrial-strength waterproofs with us.

That said, we’ve stayed in some great places – As Pias in Olveiroa, Casa de Balea in Corcubión and the excellent Hotel Semaforo at Cape Finisterre come immediately to mind – and the trip has got us walking again after a period where it was too difficult to get out and about. Assuming that Vueling don’t cock things up and ruin our journey home, we’ve had a pleasant couple of weeks, which of course included visiting A Coruña and Lugo; and We Will Be Back – our plans include taking on the Camino Portugues. As and when we undertake this journey – and all the others, of course – you can rest assured that I’ll be writing about our travels in these pages.

Hasta la próxima!

 

* Sorry about the title. Anyone younger than me will probably never have heard of Helen Shapiro, a teen star in the early 60s with a big voice and a big hit called “Walkin’ Back To Happiness”, which I, of course, had on my brain for the whole of today’s walk.

Camino Finisterre Day 12: Flamin’ Rain In Spain – Again!

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Monday 13 May 2024 – We looked out of our Mazaricos hotel window this morning to a drearily familiar scene.

In a moment of madness which we’ll surely regret, we decided we would brave the conditions, despite the track record of this kind of weather in this area. After all, the last time we came here, we were forced into a taxi by weather that was the subject of a Yellow Alert for rain. No such alert was in place today, so surely it wouldn’t be that bad? Anyway, I’d be wearing special waterproof socks, so at least I should be OK, surely? [Hah! What about me? Ed]

As you’ll remember from your reading of my description of how we got here way back on Day 2, the Mazaricos hotel, Casa Jurjo (#3 below), is quite some way off the official Camino path, and it has a deal for peregrinos whereby it will collect them from, or deliver them to, the Camino (at #2) as part of an overnight stay.

On the way out, we’d only managed from #1 to #1a before getting waterlogged. Today, the idea was to walk all the way from #2 to #1, even though we knew it would rain.

Accordingly, after breakfast, a lad called Jorje dropped us off outside #2 (a bar called Casa Pepe), and we started along the Camino towards Negreira.

At first it was raining, but OK. We walked through the village of As Maroñas

and out into the countryside.

As we went, there was the usual fairly attenuated flow of peregrinos coming in the opposite direction, and rueful smiles were the order of the day accompanying the “Buen Camino” greetings (through increasingly gritted teeth) as we passed each other.

In the distance in the photo above, you can just made out a digger by the roadside.  Its job was clearly to maintain the roadside drains that were obviously well-needed with so much flamin’ rain falling from the sky.

We pressed on,

and the rain pressed down. It was also bloody windy, which made things a lot more unpleasant. As I said, there wasn’t a Yellow Alert for Rain in force, but there might just as well have been, as I’m buggered if I could distinguish between the user experience today and that of ten days ago.  We simply got wetter and wetter, and our resolve to continue walking fell lower and lower…

…until we passed #1a (Casa Vella) again

at which point we decided, exactly as before, that Enough Was Enough. The claims to waterprooficity of my vaunted waterproof socks turned out to be overblown and my feet were as sodden as the rest of us.  We called in again

and the delightful señora there once again made us coffee and whistled up a taxi for us.

This means that we have completed the Negreira – Mazaricos stage of this Camino, albeit not in one go and, indeed, not even in one direction. This leaves unwalked the 13km from #2 to #4, which is a shame. But this Camino hasn’t been about proving we can do mileage, which the Camino Francés was, partly, and did.  This was supposed to be enjoyable and having to walk in the pissing rain is not that.

A small vignette played out whilst we had coffee at Casa Vella, as a couple of other people were there, one of whom was evidently (a) English and (b) slightly embarrassed to have no euro cash with him in order to complete paying his dues.  He asked if we could spare €20, which he would send us online.  While I suspect he was legit, I was reluctant to start handing out bank details to a complete stranger in The Foreign, even if he was an English Gentleman.  As it turned out he had sterling cash (does this make him more of a gentleman or less, these days?), and so I gained a bit on the deal – he gave me £20 and I gave him my last €20 note, retaining the €50 I judged would be needed for the taxi.  We never caught his name, but he was a pleasant chap, despite the fact that he runs a podcast, and hails from Newcastle, not that you could tell from his accent.

Anyway, the taxi was warm and, importantly, dry and ferried us swiftly and cheaply (for just €15) to our hotel, the Hotel Millan in Negreira.  We were supposed originally to have returned to the Mesquita, but there had apparently been a cock-up and so we were in a different place for tonight.  Luckily, our room was available for us to move straight into, and so we dripped our way upstairs and started the process of drying ourselves out.  We have a lovely view over the hotel’s pool

but it’s not really the weather for a swim, somehow.

The hotel offered a lunch, which was decent enough and very good V for M. Afterwards, we hopped across the road to buy some newspapers, which are almost as good at telling one the news as tablets are, but infinitely better at sopping up moisture from the inside of sopping wet shoes.

The rest of the day was spent drying out, both by us and the weather, which was dry by the evening. According to Accuweather, we should expect a couple of showers tomorrow, but, assuming that our various tactics for wringing the moisture out of our gear work, it looks like we should be able to walk the remaining leg.  We’ll take another look at the weather tomorrow morning, obvs.

Lunch had been an opportunity for us to discuss our philosophical approach to completing this Camino. It would, of course, be infinitely more satisfying to arrive into Santiago on foot than to skulk in by taxi. But the course of the last couple of weeks has taught us a lot about the limitations of our waterproofs (fairly considerable) and our courage (easily swayed by the lure of practicalities and comfort). So we’ll see.  And so will you, should you come back to these pages to find out.