New favourite places

Add St Patricks Head and Halls Falls to my list of Favourite Places (again, note the careful attention to omitting apostrophes (do you think I can blame the nomenclature board for contributing to the decline in levels of literacy? (but I digress))).

Since the day dawned gloriously, and I knew it might be quite a while before I come back this way again, I decided to dash back to St Marys in order to climb St Patricks Head. One of my reasons for doing this was to find a cache called “Paddy’s Ropes and Ladders” (at least the cache owner understands about apostrophes), so-named because there are purported to be ropes and ladders to help you up. Well, I didn’t find the ropes. I wish I had, though, because this hill is very UP (except when you do the return trip, when it becomes very DOWN). I did find the ladder AND I climbed it, but shortly after this I decided that this last little bit was just a tad too scary for me and that discretion might be the better part of valour. This is because I have realised that my sense of vertigo has been increasing in proportion to my age, in contrast to my fearlessness which has been decreasing in inverse proportion.

On the first half of the journey it also became apparent that I’ve obviously been reading far too many fantasy novels. As I made my way up through the mossy forest and along the narrow precarious track, I was reminded of accounts of malevolent trees and epic struggles to mountain passes along treacherous paths … and caught myself half expecting some fiendish fantastical creature to be seen out of the corner of my eye.

Anyway the effort was well worth it, because the views were stunning. Oh, and I found the cache too. (Phew. Imagine a DNF after all that effort!)

The other new favourite place, Halls Falls, I probably wouldn’t have stopped at but for caching. The recent rains meant that the falls were in full spate, and it’s one of those lovely temperate rainforest areas with tree ferns, and myrtles, and (unbelievably) no leeches (it must have been my lucky day). I took lots of photos, some of which you can find here.

So, two really good walks to wonderful places.

My knees, however, are letting me know that I probably overdid it a bit today!