Great Ocean Walk Self-Guided

It is seven walking days in a row, between about 9 and 19 km, and the last two days are the longest and hilliest. The path is well made and never exposed, but it has steps, steep gullies and soft sand. Fitness 3 of 5, technical 2 of 5 on our difficulty scale.

Only a day pack. Your bag stays in your room, and on days 2, 4 and 6 it rides in the shuttle with you to the next base.

The start time. Four beaches on the walk are crossed at low to mid tide, and two of them, Johanna and Milanesia, have no path around. Your guidebook gives a start time for each day, and the shuttle runs to the tide timetable.

If the sea is too high at Wreck Beach on the last morning, we drop you at Princetown instead.

By public transport from Melbourne. The V/Line train and coach leave Southern Cross at 09:10 and reach Apollo Bay at 13:12, every day.

On the last day our shuttle takes you from the Twelve Apostles to Camperdown station, about 50 minutes, for the 18:22 train to Melbourne, arriving at 21:01 (18:14 at weekends).

Apollo Bay and Port Campbell have cafés, pubs and restaurants. At Cape Otway and Glenaire you cook for yourselves: the cabin and the cottage both have kitchens, but Glenaire has no shop, so buy food in Apollo Bay before you leave. Lunch on the trail is a packed one.

Patchy. Some stretches and car parks have none, so the shuttle times are agreed in advance and the guidebook works offline.

We run the walk from September to May. October–November and February–April are the sweet spots. The weeks after Christmas are peak holiday time on this coast, with the beds to match.

June to August is wet and windy, with big swells on the tidal beaches, so we leave it out. The Cape Otway Lightstation opens Friday to Tuesday.

Yes. The Great Ocean Walk Highlights covers the western half, from Cape Otway to the Twelve Apostles, in five days.