Walking up to The Pinnacle in The Grampians.

Now when it comes to walking neither of us are wimps but reading about the two routes up to The Pinnacle we went for the easier option. I was so pleased we did! It’s not the distance that’s the tricky part (only 2.1km up to the top), it’s the smooth, slippery rocks that make it ‘interesting’. We didn’t have our hiking boots which would have helped and although my trainers are pretty good once the rocks became damp it was easy to slip on them. I guess it didn’t help that on our previous holiday in Majorca I slipped while walking one of the coastal routes and ended up visiting the local GP. Walking in my area of The Cotswolds is generally a lot easier!

We parked at Sundial car park and started our walk from there. Our first stop was Devil’s Gap and even there after very little climbing the views were impressive. Pretty flowers too although I don’t remember many flowering bushes after that point.

The picture below on the bottom left shows how smooth those rocks are. At this point I’m starting to get a little apprehensive; I could see we still had some way to go to The Pinnacle and wouldn’t you know it …it’s starting to rain. My man is being very encouraging. He knew there was no way we were turning back, I was just having a bit of a wobble! He’s now in charge of my camera as I needed both hands for clambering up the rock and so there are no pictures (although I could have taken some but I was more concerned with coaxing Maggie along) until we got to the top. There is an excellent Blog I’ve come across which shows the steeper climb from the Wonderland carpark. Fab pictures which really show the wonderful views and that the harder route is definitely not for wimps! Interesting though this family encountered lots of other walkers we were joined by just four. These lovely Dutch people were very encouraging and seemed to be quite impressed when we made it to The Pinnacle.

Wow what a view! It was well worth the hike, so glad we did it!

Thank you to the Dutch walkers for taking our picture – this was as brave as I was prepared to be!

As you can see from the pictures below our fellow walkers had no such qualms about climbing up the nearby rocks.

This is the hike to do when you’re in The Grampians. If you’re an experienced walker and have good walking boots then starting from the Wonderland car park will give you a much more adventurous walk. Whichever route you choose, you definitely won’t be disappointed!

Later that day we had to say goodbye to our feathered friends and head off back to Mornington Peninsular for the final leg of our Aussie holiday.