The Mornington Peninsula Walk

[cam_mcd]

Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone has done the 100km Mornington Peninsula Walk circuit? The close proximity to Melbourne makes it an attractive walk however a large portion of the walk is along the footpaths of the foreshore surrounded by houses and cars. Also, it appears there are no campsites, assume you would need to stay in caravan parks?

Map: http://parkweb.vic.gov.au/__data/assets ... a-Walk.pdf

Thanks

[trickos]

Hi Cam,

I can't say a great deal about the walk along the Front Beaches (bay side) as this does not interest me due to the reasons you have stated. However you could easily camp along the myriad of foreshore camps along this section.

However, the Two Bays walking track and Coastal Walk are well worth doing and quite rugged in parts.
There is a campsite (the only official camp) on the Two bays track at or just near Baldry's Crossing. South of this campsite is very pretty country with heaps of wildlife.
I reckon you could unofficially camp at a number of spots along the coastal walk as this takes in some pretty remote and spectacular spots - particularly in the Fingal Beach area / Cape Schank area.

I think the idea of a massive circuit walk is great but find it a bit of a stretch to expect people to do the whole thing in one go - given a lot of the circuit is in urban areas.

Anyway, Have fun.

Dale.

[dinna89]

I'm looking to walk Two Bays + Coastal over this weekend, is any direction preferable to walk in?

[north-north-west]

The hardest bit is the climb over Arthurs Seat. I'd start with that.

[dinna89]

The hardest bit is the climb over Arthurs Seat. I'd start with that.

We ended up starting at Sorrento, leaving Arthurs Seat until last, and getting the beach walking out of the way early.

Overall the track is pretty poor, it's not set up for overnight hikers (which makes me question the merits of a 100km track). Camping is not allowed across pretty much all of the 'Coastal' and 'Two Bays' tracks, with only the one campsite, at Lightwood Creek. Somewhere to camp near Rye or Gunnamatta would make the track a lot easier, and it seems mad that hiker's aren't allowed to camp at Fingal, the facilities are great.

There's essentially nowhere to camp between Sorrento and Fingal, especially if you don't have sand pegs. We ended up camping night one at the Fingal Picnic Area, and were woken up at 7am by a Parks ranger asking us to move on. I think usually we wouldn't have got caught, but there was a SAR operation at Fingal Beach, with a bunch of police and SES accessing the beach via this site. There is plenty of patches where you'd be able to pitch a few tents just off the track between the Fingal Picnic Area and Bushrangers Bay picnic area, but the section between Bushrangers Bay and Cape Schanck has a lot of day hikers/runners on it.

The Lightwood Creek camp site is utterly unremarkable, if I go again I'll be camping at the nearby clearing at the end of the Long Point Track, which is signposted off the main walk (300m from the main track, ~1.5k's from Lightwood Creek).