6th Sunday in and about Berowra Valley

Well will I ever learn, after last week's walk and feeling pretty well recovered on the Monday morning, I decided that I would do some exercise bike. After 10 mins I felt pretty comfortable, so I set the bike for another 30 mins with some added increase in the intensity setting. Big mistake after cooling down and then a couple of hours later at work, I had stiffened up considerably. This meant that I did not go on my scheduled Tuesday morning long walk. As I was in Melboune for 3 days after that I had to restrict myself to Gym work especially the exercise bike.

This week's walk was to be a repeat of last week's, however after we completed the trek a couple of the guys suggested that we do the walk in reverse, as there was not really any objection, this was agreed to. So we commenced at Mt Kuringai and finished at Hornsby.

And the Trek "trainers" comments on the reverse decision I had planned to repeat yesterday for next week's walk, but the popular opinion is to do it in reverse. So we'll start at Mt Kuring-Gai Station and finish at Hornsby Station. That means we'll dodge going up the cruel hill (the 600 metres asphalt) at the end of Lyrebird Gully, but we will share the undiluted joy of climbing out of Galston Gorge.

We got away at about the usual time of 7:45

Once again we had fine weather, setting off at a cracking pace. Pretty cool to start out, with temperatures (based on the car gauge) at about 6 degrees, although it was a few degrees cooler in the valleys, and there was also a light frost at Crosslands in the shaded areas, which was over an hour's walk from where we started.

After the cold start, the day got quite warm and there were many walkers out enjoying the day as well. This was the warmest walking day so far.

Not sure if this direction is a better way to travel or the original direction we took last week, although I didn't mind not having the last 6oo metre asphalt killer hill at the end. A little more slippery in parts as there had been some rain during the week, and the creek at Galston Gorge was a little higher as well.

My heels took a pounding from a long (just under 2KM's) stretch of steep to very steep downhill fire trails, actually preferred doing this uphill last week.

The finish is a steep 500 metres up very large stone steps, that have been there for many a year, well before the Great North Walk was "tidied up" for the bi-centennial, so yet another way to really finish off at the end of another training walk.

We knocked 15 minutes off last weeks time of 5 hours and 20 minutes

I pulled up really well and felt that I had recovered a few hours after the walk, so am feeling pretty good about this. Still feel the knees, but overall I think they are coping OK.