Transcript 

Good morning.  here we are in a new part of the forest. And today the countdown has started. We are exactly one month from our big hike and it’s getting real now. I’m getting excited about it.  I wanted to show you me new purchases I made.  I have a new hat because this hat, the one I had, I lost it in Spain.

And this has a bit of a creek. And we’re having a truck coming up here.  Up the Creek indeed.!

hi officially, it’s Susan Jagannath and we are off on our walk today. Back on the walk. We missed it on two days because Sunday we don’t walk. And Monday, yesterday, I had to go to a friend’s mother’s funeral.  that was a journey of a different type, isn’t it? Memento mori we will all die. But before that, we can get some walks in., here we are.

A new Cap and more

And as I was saying, I’ll show you my new cap. I have new hiking pants with lots of pockets! We are walking off on a new path. Now, this is a forest where we’ve done a couple of the tracks quite often, but we’ve branched off to a new trail.

Up the Creek

And there were me nice areas which I wanted to show you, but there was too much of noise. It’s actually next to the road,  there was the noise of traffic. And as you saw  now, the rangers truck came along.  this is the path which we had planned to take.

We keep looking at the maps on the way. We take a picture of the map and we take it. But we saw this path. What’s that? Of course.

Easy Street

This is Easy Street.  no horses, people are allowed to walk. It’s an easy walk. You can take your bike.  How about we take easy street?

I’m taking easy street. Is that okay with you? Okay,  we are walking off on Easy Street. And I’ve discovered when I’m walking with my trekking poles, my Fitbit counts only every second step.  there I am, walking, walking a whole lot of kilometres.I know the kilometres by  looking at the signs and by my legs, but the Fitbit shows only half the amount. And I think, seriously, I’ve only walked 1000 steps in the last four kilometres unless I’ve been levitating. That’s not true.  what I think is happening is when I have my trekking pole, it’s probably counting only that step. And each time the trekking pole touches the ground, you take two steps. And  I think it’s counting that as one step. To experiment I carried the trekking pole it and then my steps went up to more like the right one, because there’s no way I’ve done four kilometres with  500 steps, very big steps, and that’s not possible.

I was hoping for me Kookaburras to share with you. They were laughing. And the Kookaburras are bad. The minute they see you take out your camera, they go all silent and coy, but you can hear the breeze here.

The Significance of Today

Today – is we have exactly one month before we take off and I would like to invite you to come and join me on this trip. Virtually, I’m going to set up a Facebook group or a community, and I’m going to be putting everything in that.  when I’m actually hiking, you can join in and you can be the first to see what we’re doing. Because, you know, for me to write a new book, I need to do a new hike.  there are people who write business books and, yeah, they have it all in their brilliant heads and they  have to get it out and write the book.

But for me, before I write a new book, I must go and travel and hike. And this time we are doing a 230-kilometre hike. And what’s exciting is I’m doing it with friends.  that is really aweme. A whole group of us are meeting up and then we are going together.

 that is good because we haven’t met each other in years and we love to hike. If you’ve read my other books, if you’ve read Valley of Flowers, you’ll meet the usual suspects there and who walk with us., yes, we do like to hike and meet new people, but it comes a stage in your life when you want to spend time with those who you really know and love. And this is what’s great about this hike, is that we meet new people, but in the evenings and on the way, we work with people who we have for years.  look at that.

Okay, really should have my trekking poles here, but I take you on this live.

Maybe what I need to do is I need to find my selfie stick and put it up there. We did think of getting a drone. One of us buy a small drone camera, but I don’t know, it’s kind of expensive to get a nice one. And here’s the creek with all the fallen logs.

As I was saying, when I want to write a new hiking book, well, I must go and hike. Don’t I expect a new hiking book out. It’s due in 2023. But this is the right time to start it.  I’m walking it now, and the book will pretty much be planned and finished by early 2023.

But the time to start planning is now, you can come and join me, see what I’m doing and see how the book is going. And maybe you can al start your own book and use my plans and templates and everything.  I’ll be talking about that a little more a bit later. But I thought I’d share it with you here, because my life is walk right repeat. And in me cases it may be Walk. Write. Wine..

Repeat. When I say wine, I mean wine, not whining.

Listen to the birds.

This is Easy Street. We’ve had a few climbs but look at this one. It’s easy, but we are heading back. This escarpment is kind of a bit of bushland, which is being protected, but it does have a busy road running through it or at the side of it, too busy road.  quite often you can hear the roads.

Okay, now Easy Street is becoming not  easy. But if anyone is watching it, tell me if it’s clear, because when I download the video to get captions onto it, it looks all blurry. I’m not sure how good it is. I’m using my phone camera. I shouldn’t complain, I guess, but it is an iPhone camera, which promises all things.

Here is a lovely green valley.  this is a creek, probably. It’s dry now, but there’s probably water underground. And it’s quite different because a lot of this forest is very dark.  There’s Keith carrying the water.

 we are both walking together always. And this time he’s at the back. He’s not doing the Indian husband walking in front thing because I’m doing the Facebook Live.

if you like my hat, let me know. If you like the hat.

Right, got the hat. It’s going to give me cover. This thing will come down. But I think I will all need a beanie or mething because it’s going to be cold when I’m going for a winter walk. I haven’t let you know where I’m going yet.

Can you guess? Okay, I will stop now. Thanks for watching. And countdown. 30 days before we go, every day there will be a walk and there’ll be a page or a plan for the book.