I think we’ve all been there. You’re sitting in the car just about to drive home after spending the past five hours out bushwacking, and, you feel something just a bit off on the back of your head, so you wipe it with your hand which comes away bloody. Flipping down the visor the make-up mirror reveals a big fat leech attached to your neck. Or maybe, you are driving down the highway, 100 km/hour and you glance down; a leech is dancing its way up your pants leg, and there is nowhere to pull over. You wake up screaming, no wait, it’s real life!
When I got home on Thursday, I had seven leech bites, including three on my head. My shoes were so destroyed I simply threw them and the socks straight into the bin. On Sunday, after all that rain, I had no intention of going back into leech country, so I started from Shannons Road near Cullendulla and ran north to Tomboye Hill and back. Tomboye Hill has been on my agenda for a long time simply because it is a hill with a name. There is a single track “moto” track that crosses Tomboye Hill but the moto tracks are known leech country being narrow and wet, best avoided after 100 mm of rain.
There’s no view from Tomboye Hill, although you can see the ocean as you contour past on the north side and the final track to the top is classic leech country: narrow, wet and overhung with vegetation. Benandarah Trig, more commonly known as Big Bit Lookout has views, but the superlatives given on various websites might be a bit over the top. There is a view, but the 360 degree views claimed include a fair bit of forest. According to my Garmin watch, where tracking includes unsolicited gamification – I got about seven new awards for the trip. The exact same number of leech bites I had a few days earlier.
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