Here's another Who I Walk With story, a popular column from Great Walks magazine.
Jane Grainger and Karen Parry met at an orchestra but bonded their friendship in the great outdoors.
Jane (66): “I met Karen at a Citizen’s Orchestra event in Adelaide in 2022. We soon found we had a lot in common including ukulele, bushwalking, cycling and music. Soon after, we decided to do the Lavender Trail, a 325km walk from Murray Bridge to Clare SA. We are about halfway, managing to do a section at a time sometimes months apart.
Karen and I clicked, and our discussions are amazing, open and wide ranging and sometimes deeply personal. Some of the stuff we talk about will certainly remain on the trail! Karen provides a great meal the night before our walk often with some leftover for lunch. We seem to easily agree on distances and times pouring over the maps and deciding on parking spots for our two-car shuffle.
We have had a couple of challenges, missing a marker (more than once) due to too much gasbagging but Karen laughs, re-groups, consults the map, stops for a cuppa and we plod on. She is the ideal walking buddy, intuitively knowing when we need a bit of quiet to soak up the scenery. Once we have completed the Lavender Trail, we plan some other trails in South Australia.
A favourite memory is a walk near Tungkillo where we were completely fogged in; we could not even see the next marker. Karen walked ahead until she was a faint outline searching for a marker, then I would catch up. This continued until we eventually came to a rock wall where we sat and enjoyed a cuppa until the fog burned off.”
Karen (62): “Jane and I met in a venue far removed from a track in the bush. She had a djembe drum hoisted over her shoulder and I was sporting my ukulele, and we were both excitedly joining a Citizen’s Orchestra in Adelaide. We gravitated together; two single souls from well outside the CBD who immediately busied themselves discovering their mutual interests, including bushwalking.
So far we have walked half of the Lavender Trail, which runs from Murray Bridge to Clare. Jane is super accommodating of my overseas travel for work, which usually takes place during the best walking months. But even after a long absence, she is ever ready to mark the start on the map (she is good with maps n’ gadgets), pull on the boots and get back on the trail.
We are well-matched in our approach to walking, liking similar daily distances, having the same demands of a rest stop - a view, some shade and a knee-high boulder to park the bum - and accepting of our limitations. But, boy can we talk, sharing the ups and downs of life and plans for the future as we traverse the rolling hills and bypass gums of astounding girth. Jane is a compassionate and considered listener and our chat passes effortlessly to and fro … sometimes to the detriment of our navigation and my appreciation of the vista!
Things quieten as the day progresses, but when Jane gets a whiff of the end point her pace smartens, aches are forgotten, and her longer legs pull me towards our finish point. Or perhaps the spur is the promise of the small chocolate treat that she secretly secreted in the car in order to celebrate the conclusion of another stretch of the Lavender Trail?”
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