Song's Ridge Valley Loop Walk

Ha, ha, ha. You're going to love this one. Veghead did. He was grinning from ear to ear when he pulled this ruse off, and anyone who knows Veghead, knows he loves a good ruse. But I am ahead of myself. Back to the beginning. This week Veghead proudly pronounced the discovery of a great walk. "It's one from the Wildwalks website", which I have mentioned before and we get many of our walks from there. The subterfuge begins when Veghead prints off the track notes, all beautifully laid out as per all of Wildwalk's walks. "Oh, I've just looked up that walk again, and its quite near Bucketty, so we should just pop in to drop off that large, heavy piece of bush art that we've just acquired", he says. "OK", says I being sucked in even further. So off we go to Bucketty, and on the car journey Spinneychick is reading the track notes. "Oooo, this sounds lovely". "Oh, yes", Veghead replies. So we arrive and unpack the large thing from the back of the car, when Veghead starts unloading all of his walking gear. The waves of confusion are starting to wash over poor Spinneychick, who still has no idea what's going on. Then she takes another look at the tracknotes..... "Hang on a minute! Did you write these notes? Is the walk here?" Veghead answers with a cheesy grin, turns on his heels and asks for the first segment of the track notes to be read out. I must admit, he did a good job. We followed the route as per the track notes and it was all spot on routewise, although there was no mention of the sticky green things on the valley floor that were going to require handpicking one by one off Spinneychick's jeans and shoelaces. And even more importantly, no mention of the leach infestation which on this particular day was phenomenal. Veghead managed to complete the entire walk with I believe only one leach removing experience. Spinneychick, on the other hand, had a dismal time as far as leaches were concerned. I stopped counting after twenty. Did I mention that I have an extreme dislike for leaches. I have written a limerick to mark the occasion.

There once was a god awful leach,
From my sock to my leg he did reach.
So I gave it some strife
With Simon's Great knife,
When its slimy, hard skin I did breach.

Pure poetry! On a happier note, we did see some beautiful paperbark trees, and a humungus fungus. There are quite a number of small caves and plenty of wombat warrens. In fact, Veghead may have stepped in one. In the photo on the left, you can see him traipsing along the valley floor. Just after I took this photograph, Veghead completely disappeared from view. I immediately heard a muffled voice in the distance cry out "I'm okay". It was a great walk......except for the leaches.