The Crossing Nangeenan to Merredin
A Fourteen Kilometre Rest Day
Day 6 was officially a rest day: just the small matter of a 13.9km catch-up walk into Merredin, then hot showers, media, laundry, community support, Poppet's Pantry dinners, and feet-up recovery.
Day 6 was a rest day, however I had to walk just under 14 kilometres first.
That sounds ridiculous now, but it made sense inside the rules of the crossing. Catch-up mornings were how we avoided schedule slippage. Sometimes that meant going back to the previous night’s finish point after sleeping forward, and sometimes it was the early GPS-versus-odometer lesson showing itself: the watch distance could say one thing, but the crossing had to be measured by actual forward progress along the route. So before the rest could begin properly, the boys dropped me back to the point where the next walking session had to start.
The catch-up walk was from Nangeenan into Merredin. It was short by HAA standards, which meant it was almost cheerful. There was pipeline, open country, and that lovely feeling of knowing the day’s work had an actual end nearby.
At five kilometres to go, I felt pumped. At 500 metres to go, I was very ready to stop.
The body was adapting, but the feet were still the problem. That was the strange thing about the first week. I could feel myself getting better at the rhythm, better at moving through each day, better at breaking the distance into pieces. Then I would climb into the van at the end of a session and move like someone decades older because my feet had their own opinion about all of this.
Merredin felt like a proper place to land. It was the biggest town we had seen for days. There were hot showers, washing, media chats, gear to sort, food to eat, and the slightly misleading comfort of calling something a rest day while still doing the distance many people would call a long walk.
Laura and Bret at Merredin Tourist Park hosted us for two nights, discounted the site fees, bought a couple of hearts, and already knew about the walk from the radio. That sort of thing kept happening just when we needed it: someone had heard the story, someone wanted to help, someone made the day a little easier.
There was another act of kindness waiting ahead too. Julie at Thai Remedial Massage in Southern Cross had offered to freshen up my legs when we got there, thanks to Run Forest Run lining it up. The massage itself would happen a few days later in Southern Cross, but the offer itself already mattered. The walking was hard, but people kept making it softer around the edges.
Day 6 also gave me the first real chance to sit with the Strava problem. The Garmin file from Day 3 had corrupted, and because it was sitting in the sync queue, the remaining activities would not upload properly. Once I removed that dead file, everything else went up, but Day 3 itself had to be added to Strava manually. It was annoying, but also oddly fitting. The walk happened in the body first. The technology was just trying to keep up.
By evening, we were eating our Poppet’s Pantry dinners, and Ols had introduced himself publicly. Like Ben the day before, he wrote about what HAA was already doing inside the van, not just out on the road:
Hello everyone, Ols here. As you are all aware, I am a member of Gary’s support crew with Ben.
Firstly I would just like to say how determined and positive this man is, personally I don’t think I have met anyone quite like him!
Before the trip I was only able to meet Gary a handful of times before we actually set off for the big journey, so really we are still getting to know each other.
So far Gary has been very inspirational towards me, and like Ben, I was also a smoker. After having spoken with Gary, and knowing what training and effort he has put in to this, I decided to give up smoking, stop completely and just go cold turkey. So I am now just over 10 days without a fag, and feeling a hell of a lot better for it!
I have walked alongside Gary a few times now, and a couple of them we have already broken into a jog and picked the pace up. I am not only doing this for my benefit to get fitter, but to support Gary and help him through the journey to Brisbane because 5,400 km’s is a very long way on your own!!
My aim is to take part in each park run en-route with Gary, and at every park run closer to Brisbane, beat the previous lap time.
It is such a pleasure to be on this adventure with Gary, helping him make his way across this wonderful country! Already there has been stunning scenery, beautiful night skies, and I really can’t wait to see more of it as we make our way further across Australia!
That was the rest day, really: walking, admin, gratitude, food, laundry, device charging, problem solving, people starting to tell their own version of the story, and trying to get enough sleep before the next morning.
It was not glamorous. It was exactly what we needed.
Images From The Day
