Pre-Hike / Post-Hike Adjustments
The Accommodation Requests were emailed out, or in some cases, followed up on the phone. Most of this process went without a hitch, but some issues caused a change to our Pre and Post Hike Itinerary.
Itinerary Version | 9 |
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Itineray Date | 2021-05-22 |
Issues solved this Iteration:
- Start location
- Tweaked Wilpena Pound Food Drop, so we don't need to pick anything up after the hike.
- Quorn overnight moved from Flinders Ranges Motel to Austral Inn Hotel, as Flinders Ranges Motel was up for sale and not confident to make future bookings.
Start Location
We had planned to spend a couple of nights up at Angorichina Tourist Village, one night on our Food Drop run, and another on the night before the hike started.
The bus up from Adelaide runs twice a week and doesn't actually pass the Northern Heysen Trailhead. So we were thinking of leaving our hiking packs up at Angorchina and travelling up unencumbered. Unfortunately, they have a two-night minimum and wouldn't give us the two nights split. As much as we're keen to support the local economy, paying for 4 nights and using 2 was beyond what we were willing to stretch.
So the tweaking of the Pre- and Post-Itineraries involved:
- Moving the first night of the Food Drop run to Wilpena Pound
- Adjusting the Hike Itinerary to start on the previous afternoon, and hike into the first campsite for the first night. This will essentially mean that the next day is a tiny bit shorter.
- Organising Angorchina to pick us up from the Bus Terminus and dropping us off at the Trailhead on the Thursday afternoon.
Wilpena Pound Food Drop
Post-Hike Itinerary was quite tight with the kilometres we need to travel, and we were hoping to get back to Adelaide to take our car minders out for dinner before heading home. So I modified the Wilpena Pound Food Drop, which was going to have one of our 'Repair Packs' (which has all sorts of bits and pieces to replace breakages and the like) – but that meant that we'd generally need to return to pick up the stuff we didn't need.
So I moved the 'Repair Pack' to Bucharinga North as we'd need to go back and collect our rubbish in any case.
Quorn Overnight
This wasn't too much of an issue, but the nice administrative staff at Flinders Ranges Motel didn't want to take our money or booking until the motel's future was more certain. So they'd asked us to call back after a period of time, closer to our departure, which we did, but nothing much had changed. So we booked at the Austral Inn Hotel, and funnily enough, we're happy with pubs over motels.
Next Steps
Now that the accommodation is booked pre-, mid- and post-hike, and often paid, for we can concentrate on getting the gear and our supplies ready.
Scary, as I write this the countdown timer is down to Countdown timer at 52 days, 13 hours, 20 minutes and 11 seconds:
Next TaskSupplies Purchasing
where we'll process the shopping list… and spend lots of money.
Our Resources
The Friends of The Heysen Trail have a huge amount of resources available, which we have obviously availed ourselves of quite liberally. I'll be updating this as required…
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