Day eight - Mt Gambier to Millicent - 68 km, 380 m - Ride total 673 km's

There was a coffee shop the Boys had spotted and that's where today's ride went before heading off to see the "Blue Lake" which is a huge crater beside the town that has filled with water and now is the source of the town's water supply - if definitely was a lovely blue colour. Drom there we carried on up the hill and then on up to the Tower overlooking both lakes and the surrounding countryside - the Tower was a couple of hundred metres further up the hill and the path to it had a 22% gradient in some places so it was a case of walking the bikes up that section of path,

After we had  one the "Touristy" bit we headed back down into town to pick up the bike path beside the  old railway line and out of town went the four of us. Just before we pulled onto the bike path Elio went by and said something about "coffee" - further down the track when we realized we were three short things began to fall into place and we could see that Elio, Peter and Stephen had all stopped for another coffee! This was about 30 minutes after the previous coffee! We left them to their coffee and began to make our way along our route to Millicent on the rail trail path. After a few km's the rail path stopped, and we were out on the quiet road again. My Garmin had me turning left and onto a gravel road, so we had a committee meeting and decide to go with what Anthony's device that was showing we continue going straight ahead - at the time it made sense - I gave up on my Garmin at this time as it for some reason was wanting to steer ne left. After a few more km's we found ourselves at cross-roads - we were on the seal, but the other three roads were all hard a packed gravel/dirt with a thin cement mixed coating on top (think a gravel road without the gravel and not sealed as we know it! Anyhow all that aside what we really found was that somehow, we had deviated from the said route and were now several km's down and out to the left of where we had planned to be. There was nothing for it other than to take the unsealed road the few km's that would then have us back on track again, you can see the deviation in the screenshot below. The red arrow shows the desired sealed route the blue line at that point shows our actual route.

What originally was going to be a very short 51 km ride with our Tourist Blue Lake addition became a 59 km ride and then with our "Diversion" turned out to be 68km's in the end,

Bu the time we were riding into Millicent at about 12:30 the farming had become cropping and quite a few on farm silos were to be seen.

Tonight's accommodation is in the "Grand Hotel" a true-blue Aussie country pub.













Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day four - Apollo Bay to Port Campbell - 101 km, 1698 m - ride total 303 km

Image
 A 7:30 a.m. departure on account of it being one of our bigger days and we were stopping at the bakery to get something for lunch as the plan was to stop beside a Billabong to boil the billy and have our lunch out in the open. It just so happened that sunrise this morning was at 7:27 a.m. and as we left the camp there it was rising above the horizon of Bass Strait. It made for a good photo opportunity however it may have been a case of having to be there to get the full beauty of it. I swung by the small boat harbour and took a few snaps then headed out of town and before too long we were into the first of our two big hills for the day - slow and steady was the order of the day as we climbed up into the rolling hill country and away from the Coast which we didn't get back to until around the 80 km marker. Our descent took us into some new country for a bit before we were beginning "Lavers Hill" which is a reasonable climb of around 450 metres. We regrouped at the top of ...
Read more

Day 14 - Hallett Cove to Adelaide - 39 km, 269 m - Ride Total 1,202 km's

Image
Ride Complete. Finished. Our original planning for this ride estimated the total distance between Melbourne and Adelaide was around 1,200 km's. When we pulled up outside the Adelaide YHA I had ridden 1,202 km's - 2 km's further than what I had to! I have had a great time riding with my Aussie buddies Peter, Stephen, Abdy, Frank, Elio and Anthony and have been well and truly supported by my good Kiwi mate Ian who drove our support vehicle. My thanks to all my buddies above for making the trip as enjoyable as it was. Other than a couple of punctures there was nothing that got in the way of us all having a good time - some days were hard (yesterday) and some were not (today) the scenery changed considerably along the way and was always very "Australian" - I saw live Camels', Kangaroos' and a Koala along with a dead Wombat and heard of others seeing snakes and Emus. The beaches are amazing whether they be along the Great Ocean Road of here on South Australia w...
Read more

Day One - Seaford to Rye - 53 km 362 m - total 53 km

Image
Rather than ride out of the city I took the option of a lift to Seaford yesterday so that I could spend a little time with Alex and Lou and get to meet Izzy their beautiful nine-month-old daughter. They were kind enough to have me stay Saturday night.  I got underway in the rain on the short ride to Peter's holiday home at Rye where we will be spending the first night of the tour. I was the first rider to arrive - Peter, Abdy and Ian drove down yesterday (dropping me off on the way) they had things all set up for us and had done some shopping for our evening meal. A bike wash, a shower and a cuppa has me feeling really good.  Elio, Anthony and Frank caught the train out of the city to Frankston and have played the wet day, "Phone-a-friend" card and will have Peter meet them at the station in the Support vehicle. It feels good to be underway and only about 1,150 km's left to ride. The highlight of the day has to be lovely big, long cuddle I got from wee Izzy.
Read more