The Old Ghost Road Trail is a distance of 85km.

It’s been transformed into a rideable landscape for bikers and therefore, the trail for walkers like us was like a highway grade.

The smell of clean before taking the first steps …

And the gradient itself was a steady upwards after a final picture under ‘The Old Ghost Road’ sign and a crossing over of a stream using a swing bridge.

18kms of it, to the first hut, the Lyell Saddle Hut.

Majestic beech forest dominated overhead, as did the giant punga palm ferns fauna.

Bird song echoed.  Robin’s weren’t shy and one even had the guts to peck at Jeanna’s leg drawing crimson.  Didn’t know they were meat eaters!

A heap of imagination bounced off the grey matter walls between the ears as we trapsed the long-forgotten gold miners’ route of yesteryear.  Weathered artifacts dotted the sides of the trail.

The old fella who had arrived prior to our departure with no teeth, a tobacco rollie hanging from the corner of his mouth, well-worn clothes and a gold panning sluice box sticking out from his backpack that befriended us, told the story that there was still gold to be discovered in these here hills.

It was his life now till his end of days.  Find that one nugget to change his life.  New teeth being a goal.

The arrival at Lyell Saddle Hut was welcomed.

All the huts on the trail are well equipped with gas stoves, pots, crockery and kfs’s.  To assist the bikers with carrying less.  We walkers were carrying the extra’s for that just in case situation where you have to shore up in-between a hut.  For whatever reason.

We swapped day wear for evening wear and then settled into a game of cards, meeting and conversing with other arriving fellow biker/walking trailers, compared dehydrated dinners and bantered bull shit with laughter.

A very exciting first day escaping the hustle and bustle of worldly events.

Both domestically.

And globally.