 |
| Early morning |
Knowing it was a shorter day we
let ourselves sleep an extra 5 minutes, though thankfully it didn’t feel as
cold as previous mornings. It was also the first morning we packed up a dry
tent! Breakfast was an alfresco, or alfreezo, affair in the caravan park but we
did manage to score seats around the fire. We also managed for the first time
to camp close to the luggage truck, so no lugging heavy luggage halfway across
a field. All in all it was a good start to the morning and it only got better.
 |
| Name's a bit of a worry! |
The first 5km was along the rail
trail that runs between Laura and Stone Hut. It’s a gorgeous trail to ride and
I fully intend to go back and ride the whole thing. There was a little incident
along the trail that provided a brief moment of panic. My jacket, which I love,
is missing the end of the zipper that you grab to do it up, so I’ve replaced it
with a paper clip. Somehow I had managed to thread the paper clip (which was at
my neck as the jacket was done up) through my glove in my attempts to unzip the
jacket. I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to stop gracefully with my
arm held in that position and there was a brief moment of panic as I envisioned
my self tumbling down the side of the trail. Sanity returned and I realised I
could get my hand out of the glove to stop the bike and correct the whole
situation. Disaster averted!
 |
| The rolling hills of Laura |
After this little excitement, we
headed west into the lush, green farmland around Laura. It was such a contrast
to our ride on day one, travelling through the dry mallee scrub to come here
which was so green and almost manicured in comparison. We headed up some dirt
roads until we were directed onto a farmers track that possibly hasn’t been
driven on in a while. This was the closest we came to single track for the
whole ride and it was fun! There were rocky, overgrown sections to spin up
followed by descents that had just enough gradient to keep you on your toes and
a mud puddle at the bottom of one of these that proved the undoing of some of
our fellow riders. The top of this section gave us our first glimpse of Mount Remarkable
for the day before sending us speeding downhill out onto a gravel road.
 |
| The puddle of doom! |
 |
| CLP showing MTB savvy |
Morning tea shortly followed at
the Wirrabara Forestry Office and I was very excited to see that it included
facilities! It was here we heard a tale of a rider sitting beside the mud
puddle wringing out his socks and warning other riders. Have to say this
particular rider was a top bloke and he took his sudden drenching in his
stride.
 |
| This made me happy |
 |
| Showing off the jersey |
From morning tea we headed deeper
into the Wirrabara
Forest and found some
hills. Unfortunately my partner was having a rough day and struggled up those
hills with a very sore knee. Before too long a group of ride marshals joined us
and with a bit of seat adjustment and some stick on icepacks, we were off
again. The Marshals kept us company to the lunch stop and the cheerful
conversation went a long way to helping my partner conquer our final day.
 |
| Downhill! |
Lunch was excellent as always and
the chocolate cake went down a treat. In my partners case it went down very
quickly then he was back on the bike, pedalling away so he didn’t stiffen up. I
took my time enjoying lunch, then took off after him. It took me just over 10km
going fairly hard (there were some good, slightly downhill sections where it
was fun to push a bit) to catch him and by then we were meant to be lessthan
10km away from finishing.
 |
| CLP's pain face |
Unfortunately there were some
final hills that weren’t that easy to spot on the map and they were between us
and Melrose. So
we geared down and spun, taking it easy and trying to avoid the dust of passing
cars. We thought we had passed all the hills once we reached Battagunyah
winery, as we had scoped out the section between the winery and Melrose over Easter. I
swear I remembered being all up hill on the way out and downhill on the way
back into Melrose
but there was one hill left. Finally we reached the top and stopped to enjoy
the view before flying into town.
 |
| Mount Remarkable |
I was excited to finally reach Melrose as it’s a town
we’ve visited a few times before. It was also the end of our journey which
meant we had successfully completed the Mini Mawson 2 section of the Outback
Odyssey. With this buzzing in my head I was full of energy and after setting up
the tent decided to have a crack at my favourite trail, Weaving Camels. What I
discovered is that I was more tired than I thought and while my legs were good
for turning over pedals on dirt roads, the accumulated fatigue was not good for
riding technical trails. Still I did one loop and made it up a bit of the trail
that I hadn’t been able to before, so I was happy.
 |
| Downhill to Melrose (finally) |
Dinner was a bit of a happy and
sad affair, everybody was happy to reach Melrose
and have their rest day, I was happy that we made it but sad that we were
leaving our friends. They were possibly sad they were loosing the people that
had brought the sun, especially when the weather girls started to predict rain
again. But Melrose
turned on a wonderful meal of roast lamb and beef, followed by apple crumble
and washed down by numerous glasses of Battagunyah’s wine. A very merry night
indeed.
 |
| A true Man Of Steel! |
No comments:
Post a Comment