When travel itineraries attack

One of the easiest mistakes to make while travelling is to try to fit too much in and yesterday I definitely fell victim to the overstretched itinerary. As anyone who knows me will attest, I’m not one to take it slow and I do tend to travel at breakneck speed (even for a guidebook writer) so when I planned to make five stops and travel 500km in one day I thought I could handle it. Turns out I was wrong.

I left Margaret River around 8am and dashed south to make the first tour of the day at Cape Leeuwin lighthouse. I climbed its 176 steps with a lovely German couple I regretted offering to take a picture of (they posed for far more than was strictly polite) and a family of what turned out to be complete bogans. Anyone unfamiliar with Aussie slang may have to look that one up but its meaning may become clear when I say that the three grubby kids all climbed the tower in bare feet.

It was spectacular though. We could get outside on the walkway at its top and see for miles over the Southern and Indian oceans (this is where they meet). There was even a pod of dolphins playing in the surf just offshore, as if on demand just for us.

But I didn’t have time to soak it up. Back in the car it was two hours to the Gloucester Tree (an old fire watchtower you can climb up on metal poles sticking out from its sides), which I barely had time to call in at, and then another half an hour to Northcliffe and the Understory Sculpture Walk. WA was having its hottest November day in seven years or something (being so close culturally to us Brits, this of course made the paper) and I had chosen the peak of the heat to climb out of my air-conditioned bubble and walk 1.2km. Fortunately most of the sculptures were among the trees so shade was abundant and the MP3 player soundtrack meant it was easy to learn about the artwork without too much concentration. There were sculptures of all kinds, from carved wooden seats to thrusting metal flowers wrapped around a tree and I had the place to myself – a hint that Northcliffe’s plan to keep the visitors coming by building this may not be quite paying off just yet.

Back in the car I had about 1.5 hours to drive to the Valley of the Giants treetop walk and this is where I came a gutser, as they say in these parts. First I had to negotiate roadworks – not British roadworks where you barely pass within half a mile of any action, but Aussie roadworks where the bitumen was literally completely uprooted and the dusty, rutted underneath was my only way through. I passed a working digger with about three inches to spare and very nearly ended up in the ditch the other side thanks to its roadhogging but, thanks be to the car hire gods, the car survived unscathed.

The road from here was straight as a tightrope and there was barely an undulation to keep me alert for kilometre after kilometre. I felt very drowsy so pulled in to take a break and decided to climb into the back for a few minutes. The next thing I knew half an hour had passed and I felt like I’d been hit by a roadtrain – fortunately, my in-one-piece car attested that this was not the case. Now late for my 4pm appointment (who knew guidebook research was so much like being a travelling salesman) I had to push on, stifling my yawns.

Suffice to say, I made it in one piece and the tree-top walk was as spectacular as I remembered. Being level with the tops of the tingle and karri trees is by far the best way to understand their great height and the walk around the forest floor allowed me to sit inside a tree big enough to drive through.

Feeling more alert for the 45-minute drive to Denmark I even managed a pit stop at Williams Bay National Park where the deep blue sky made Greens Pool an even more spectacular shade of green than normal and the granite outcrops of Elephant Rocks seem utterly idyllic.

I was left with less than half an hour to shower and change for dinner at Pepper & Salt (a fab new restaurant at Matilda’s Estate winery where I had deliciously juicy steak and yummy shiraz) and wasn’t the best company I’ve ever been for meeting my contact from the tourist board. Feeling like I just wanted to go to bed during one of the nicest dinners I’ve had in a while made me realize that I need to build in more rest time and not spend 24 hours of every day thinking about work. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find time to sit and smell the coffee – both figuratively and literally.

Discovering Margaret River

Today was one of those idyllic days that travel is, in an ideal world, all about. Leaving Nannup and heading back towards civilization around 8am the sun was already beating hard enough through the windscreen that air con was needed and there was not an airplane trail, let alone a cloud, in the sky.

My first stop was Margaret River Chocolate Factory where I had coffee and loaded up on truffles, before driving on to the town of Margaret River to join Sean Blocksidge’s Margaret River Discovery Tour.

Sean markets this as the “tour for people who don’t do tours” and it certainly didn’t bear much resemblance to the coach and minibus tours I’ve previously been herded around on. Our group was just five (six is the maximum) and we all spent the day being driven around in Sean’s 4WD as if we were old friends of his. The beauty of this tour is that Sean knows all the right people in the area to get exclusive access to places not normally available to visit and we literally got to see things we couldn’t have seen on our own – certainly not in a hired 2WD anyway.

We start on the Margaret River itself, which, despite being the area’s namesake, is way down the list of attractions most people are here to see. Canoeing about three quarters of a kilometre out and back is a great introduction to the river – long enough to relax and get into the spirit of the tour but short enough not to be backache-inducing. The others in the group were two couples (one on honeymoon) and it’s easy to see why this is the main market for this tour – with the right person in the boat with you, this would be really romantic.

Heading on out to the coast, we grab coffee at Sea Gardens Café before watching the swell at Prevelly, aka Surfer’s Point. This beach has seen some of the biggest waves in the world over the past few years and Sean showed us unbelievable pictures of surfers riding them and told stories of friends returning to shore with dislocated hips and broken shoulder bones.

From here we head into the surrounding Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park, a protected area of sand dunes which is home to the permanent water source Ellens Brook and dreamtime site Meekadarabee Falls (more a trickle if we’re honest). We pause here to soak up the bush for a while and Sean points out jarrah, marri and karri trees, has us chew on a peppermint leaf and gives us a taste of three delicious local honeys. Talking about how the Aborigines lived off the land here for over 30,000 years and tasting some of the produce that comes from it makes me realize how abundant it really is – it might look like a scrubby wasteland but the truth is it’s far from barren out here.

To prove this even further we head for Fraser Gallop winery to taste some of their wines and have lunch in among the barrels of their shed. This is not something the general public can do and visiting a winery this way is far better than any cellar door experience – we get three whole bottles between us for a start. Both the whites (a sauvignon blanc semillon, or SBS, and a chardonnay) are lovely but the real treat here are the award-winning reds. We all want a glass of the cabernet merlot and as we finish up Sean produces a bottle of the cabernet sauvignon, which in its 2007 vintage won Best Bourdeaux Blend at the Decanter World Wine Awards. It’s so smooth, so velvety and so smoky that I could down the bottle but there’s one more place to visit: the Willyabrup cliffs, and it won’t pay to be tipsy as we walk along the coast.

Wandering along the path here (part of the long-distance Cape to Cape walking track) is the perfect end to the day. The views are spectacular under the still-dazzling blue sky, the wildflowers add splashes of vibrant colour to the scrubland under foot and off the coast the beady-eyed are rewarded with sightings of migrating whales blowing.

Unlike most tours, this one has been genuinely enlightening – as well as completely considerate of its surroundings. It’s been lovely to spend the day in a group too and it almost makes me sad to go back to the lonely open road tomorrow. Still, I reckon I’ll survive – I’m taking some Margaret River wines with me after all.