torrie international: Tasmania - quite simply two of the best weeks of my life.

[December 2014]

Cycle touring is out of the window, so here's the new plan. Instead of heading round and down the east coast to Hobart by bicycle, we hire a car and follow the same route in a week or less. We then keep on cruising around and then up through the centre/west; all the while praying for Bex's foot to heal in time to do some trekking and/or summits in the second week.

All the preparations worked a dream! We picked up a brand new (2000km on the clock!) Hyundai i20 for less than £15 a day, tent for £10, sleeping bags for £6.50... The list goes on and on,equally cheaply for all we needed, even managing to grab loads of the cooking/eating paraphernalia for about £1 (total!) In the local charity shop. Result.

All set, the adventure began in earnest! - just over two weeks was spent living solely out of car and tent, it rained a little and was oft times cold, but for the most part we had the very best weather Tasmania had on offer.

To say Tasmanians are humble, kind and welcoming would be an understatement; describing the mountains, coasts and all the wilderness is equally difficult to do justice. Its a staggering and immensely varied land, the coastal east and mountainous north west (in my opinion) the most beautiful.

We drove the most spectacular mountain and coastal roads, visited incredible beaches, coves, bays and high coastal walkways. Wildlife of both land and sea were regularly encountered, often in our campsites in the case of wallabies and pademelons!!

The foot did (finally) heal sufficiently to allow us to get hiking in the wilds and, quite frankly, all this more than made up for missing out on the cycling. Encountering touring cyclists on the roads and hills made us quite thankful to be traveling by car, it looked torturous! We'll save that adventure for another day/country, maybe somewhere flatter...

Our most epic adventures can be found (soon!!!!) as the first published entries on my (slightly more informative) trekking and summit blog, 'summityoulike.blogspot.com':

Aside from these tales, I'll let these photos attempt to paint a picture of our time in Tasmania. Suffice to say those two weeks were two of the very finest on our travels, the besting of which will take some doing... It was heart achingly painful to return the car and step on the plane back to Melbourne.