Day: 062
Date: Tuesday, 01 September 2020
Start: Darwin
Finish: Wangi Falls (Litchfield National Park)
Daily Kilometres: 129 (click for Julie's Strava and photos and here for our walk)
Total Kilometres: 6363
Weather: Hot, humid, breezy and mostly sunny
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Egg & baxon sandwiches
Lunch: Ham, cheese & tomato sandwich/Chicken, cheese & coleslaw sandwich
Dinner: Soup, macaroni cheese
Aches: Nothing significant
Highlight: At the end of a long hot day, our swim in the plunge pool at the base of Wangi Falls was very welcome. The water, while not cold, was beautifully refreshing, and floating around beneath the majestic falls surrounded by rainforest was just magic.
Lowlight: Our morning ride south along the Cox Peninsula Road, though scenic and quiet, gradually became tougher as the south-easterly breeze strengthened. It was hard work in hot humid weather and we were very glad when we turned south-west on Litchfield Park Road and life became much easier.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
Our destination for the day was Wangi Falls in Litchfield National Park, and there were two ways to get there. We could retrace our steps out of Darwin and then go via Batchelor with sealed road the whole way, or we could catch a ferry from Darwin across to Mandorah and then ride down the Cox Peninsula and come in to the Park the back way, knowing we would have to deal with gravel road of unknown quality and length (but less than 25km).
In the end, we opted for the back way and left our hotel at 5:50am with the goal of catching the 6:30am ferry from Cullen Bay, 3km away, with a stop to buy sandwiches for breakfast and lunch at a 24-hour service station en route. Getting the heavy bikes onto, and especially off, the ferry was challenging, with the latter requiring dragging them up several flights of steps (as we were struggling up, the ferry skipper, who was leaning out of the bridge and enjoying the show, helpfully commented that we were lucky it wasn't low tide). The ferry trip itself, only took 20 minutes, but gave us a spectacular look at the harbour and coastline as the sun rose.
From the ferry we rode south down the Cox Peninsula through quite beautiful tropical woodland, which was very green in places, and into a growing headwind. At our breakfast break by the road at 8:30am, we both commented on how humid it felt, and hoped that, as we got further from the coast, it would diminish. After breakfast, it was another 25km to the Litchfield Park Road turnoff, and those kilometres were very hard into the growing wind on the undulating road (see above).
Once on the Litchfield Park Road, the riding became much easier and very pleasant, as the undulating road wound through pretty woodland and past rocky outcrops. We were waiting for the road to turn to gravel, and it eventually did as we approached the Finnis River crossing. For 12km we were on an occasionally rough gravel road paralleling some major road construction. It was evident that if we had been a year later the whole road would have been sealed, but as it was we were happy with just 12km and it was over fairly quickly.
At our lunch stop, I told Julie I had read there was a kiosk at Wangi Falls that supposedly closed at 2pm or 2:30pm, I couldn't remember which. With 24km to go, we might just make it in time to score an ice-cream and/or cold drink. By this time our water and drinks were all at least air temperature, 38C, so that had a lot of appeal. Despite one granny gear climb, and with the aid of some focused effort, we reached the kiosk at 2:15 to find it still open, though in the process of closing. We really enjoyed those ice-creams and cold drinks, as we sat on a bench in the shade listening to the unseen Wangi Falls a short distance away, and knowing our riding for the day was done.
We then found a campsite in the nearby campground, set up our tent and walked 300m to the large and inviting plunge pool at the base of the falls. First, though, we decided to take a short walk to a viewing platform and ended up doing the full 1.7km loop walk that took us up onto the arid plateau through lovely dark rainforest (smelling of bats) and across the top of the falls. After descending the other side, we went for an overdue and very welcome swim (see above).
We dried by sitting in the sun, and then returned to camp and had dinner, occasionally chatting to two touring motorcyclists camped nearby. There was a wi-fi hotspot in the falls picnic area set up by the NT government (to gather demographic details of tourists who login) this afternoon, and I wandered over there in the hope of posting this blog update before having an early night. Alas, it had been removed. We expect to be roadside camping tomorrow night, so are very unlikely to have internet access again.
No comments:
Post a Comment