XPLORE – Out & About

After spending a wonderful Saturday evening at a Day on the Green which was held at Bimbadgen Wine Estate in the Hunter Valley, the alarm was ringing out that Sunday morning had arrived.

 I don’t normally wake to an alarm as my body is well regulated to getting up early to exercise, however after a late night I didn’t want to miss the Sunday morning action.

My usual partner in all things adventure, brother-in-law, Ray, and I were heading to a favourite training haunt of ours, Heaton’s Gap.

Heaton’s Gap is located half way between his home in Newcastle, and the Hunter Valley wine-growing region. There is a power line track running up a rather steep hill and we regularly train up and down the hill. Sometimes we run as much as we can, and storm the rest, other times we wear heavy packs laden with a sandbag.

Usually halfway up we are cursing the hill, but when we get to the top and take in the view, the cursing stops, the heart rate slows, and we’re sure happy it is downhill on the way back.

 Today, Ray’s nephew, Daniel, joined us, and along with Ray, the pair ran to the top as fast as they could go…

I elected to wear a 25-kilogram backpack, and headed off to further break-in a new pair of Alpine hiking boots, the ones I will be wearing on my ascent of Mt Aspiring in New Zealand just after Christmas.

Crikey, it was not much past 7am in the morning, but the sun already had a sting in it, and the humidity was high.

The boys were heading back down as I was approaching the steeper section of the hill, and Daniel even came back up for “seconds” after completing his first lap.

And Ray, well he was suffering from the flu like symptoms I had only a week ago, but still posted a very healthy time.

And me?

In true alpine mountaineering style I just put one foot after the other all the way up, and all the way back down, just taking in the scenery and letting the world float by…

Talk about floating by; Strewth, I was perspiring so much, I could have literally floated away!

It was a great morning, but what of the rest of the day?

…Well, that was spent lazing about with family and friends!

And how good is living and lazy afternoons in a hammock, hey…