After our restful afternoon yesterday we felt in need of some exercise. We had a choice of doing some walking or hiring canoes to paddle through the gorge. The wind had picked up considerably so we opted for the walk. We started before breakfast with a short walk up to a viewpoint on a small hill near the campground. Then after breakfast we dropped the annexe tent off and packet up the tent and drove the 10km to the gorge. There was a choice of walks and we started with the ‘island stack’ walk where the escarpment seemed to be completely surrounded by the river, hence ‘island’. That didn’t take us long so we then set off on the walk to the head of the gorge. At least, we set off in that direction, not fully sure whether we’d do the full walk as it was advertised as ‘strenuous’ etc etc. As ever, it wasn’t that bad and we eventually arrived at a fabulous viewpoint looking over the upper gorge. This has to be one of the prettiest gorges we’ve seen. The path then descended into the gorge and followed the river back towards the car park. About half-way, there was a small waterfall connecting the upper and middle sections. For canoeists there had been provided a place to pull out the canoe and drag it round so that it could be launched into the upper section of the gorge. This was a very pretty spot and we sat there a while and John went for a swim.
After that we headed to another viewpoint and by the time we got back to the truck the day was nearly over. And we’d had a decent day’s exercise after several days of sitting in the car.
Viewpoint at upper gorge
Waterfall between middle and upper sections of gorge
