Month: November 2016

Over The Hills Far Away

Over The Hills Far Away

Leaving Wagga Wagga we headed towards Sydney via the Hume Highway. Our first plan was to head north to Bathurst and cross the Blue Mountains on the Great Western Highway. However, after a very helpful conversation with the owner of a bike shop in Wagga Wagga we elected to go by the Hume Highway with its ample hard shoulder. Although the road through Bathurst was more scenic the thought of a variable hard shoulder and trucks passing at 100km/hr didn’t attract us for some reason. 

Here is a more detailed map of our route to Sydney. The Blue Dot is currently relaxing in Goulburn which was Australia’s first inland city. 


Either way, we knew we were going to have hills and, as you know, Susan hates cycling up hills. I don’t know why as our knees are fine now after I took charge of our medical care. Basically, I googled the problem then we did everything everyone recommended. So I don’t know what actually worked but somewhere there is a great cure for sore knees and we are evidence of it, whatever it is. 
Wagga Wagga to Gundagai was 84km and 1600 feet of ascent. We managed to keep to back roads and avoid the Hume Highway on this part of the cycle and we had a wonderful day in the sun. Yes the weather has improved and we are back to experiencing 30c+. It’s not pleasant! Are cyclists really ever happy with the weather?

Here’s me on the old Hume Highway with not a car in sight. You have no idea how brave Susan is in taking this picture.  At any moment I could just jump on the bike and cycle off! Of course I’m joking and wouldn’t leave her. I would miss her advice when to ‘go’ at traffic lights. I mean, if nobody shouts ‘GREEN’ within a nano second of the lights changing I could sit there for hours!  She does wonder, however, why I keep watching videos of the sprint start of the bobsleigh run 😀


From Gundagai we headed to Yass (the name ‘Yass’ is derived from the Aboriginal word ‘yarrh’ which means running water).

We knew this was going to be a big day of climbing but not as big as it was.  It didn’t help when, on the first big climb, I thought I heard a scuffing noise. Now I’m a bit OCD when it comes to rattles and squeaks on the bike. It annoys Susan when we have to repeatedly stop until I get the noise pinpointed and sorted. This time I thought I would be mature and let it go. After all, we were on a mammoth long hill.  

When we reached the top, after a huge effort, we got stuck into our sandwiches. They were meant for lunch but 10.30am is nearly four hours from breakfast. As we were munching away Susan noticed a flat tyre on the trailer. Ah that was the scuffing noise! The trailer is a real deadweight to pull up any incline and not noticing a flat tyre is probably an indication of how hard it is. You could probably take off both wheels and we would still not notice. Once you get to ‘this is really bl**dy hard’ then there’s nowhere else to go. 

Well Susan had made the sandwiches so I got to kneel in the layby and get covered in oil and grease doing the repair. As Susan says ‘we all have our jobs to do’. 

The cycle from Gundagai to Yass was an epic cycle for us. The temperature reached 34c, we ran out of water until we found Barney’s cafe at Bookam, climbed 7 major hills and reached our destination at 7.30pm. A total of 103km and 4,000 feet of ascent – our biggest day ever on the tandem. We ordered pizza delivery and were sleeping by 9.30pm. 

Next day we were back on the Hume Highway. First, I had to repair another puncture on the same trailer wheel – I missed the glass that caused the problem and it repeated the puncture. Schoolboy error. 


Nice shoulders on that Highway. Mmmmm.

One issue with Australian hard shoulders is that I’m not sure they’re ever cleaned. This means the debris is unbelievable. They are littered with glass, rubber, sizeable metal objects and dead animals – a danger to cyclists and motorists. 

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned but dead kangaroos are pretty common. In Western Australia we used to see over 50 a day and on this part of the Hume Highway there were many. Someone really must do something about clearing up.  You can clearly tell what’s been lying for a while and a nice white skeleton is always an obvious clue. Apologies for being morbid.

Here’s a picture of a thistle that reminds us of Bonnie Scotland to make you feel happy again and take your mind off thousands of dead kangaroos by the roadside with nobody caring about them. Sorry, sorry, I’m not helping am I?


After a few kilometres we met Marc. If you think what we are doing is more effort than you would ever like to consider as being sensible think about what he hopes to achieve.

Originally from the UK, now living in Melbourne, Marc (www.chasingthesun.run) is running across Australia from Sydney to Perth. Outstanding drive and energy for a worthwhile purpose. Live life. 

Now back to Susan and I with a selfie at the top of a hill.


I promise to post a photo of us together in Sydney just to prove that I never managed to perfect my bobsleigh getaway 😀

This was a photo at our lunch stop. Pizza for lunch. That’s what’s great about having pizza the night before – we have the left overs for lunch the next day.  Usually, we have no alternative on the road.  

After 83km and 2,500 feet of climbing we reached Goulburn. We had a quiet night out at a local hostellery where the food was plentiful and the beer ice cold.


It’s great to be in Australia. 
4,618km to date. 

Wagga Wagga

After 5 days cycling from Melbourne we have left the state of Victoria and reached Wagga Wagga in New South Wales.

Wagga Wagga is midway between Melbourne and Sydney and sits on the traditional land of the aboriginal Wiradjuri people. Wagga means crow and to create the plural the Wiradjuri repeat a word, thus ‘Wagga Wagga’ translates to ‘the place of many crows’. 

To arrive here we first cycled 81km north to Broadford. I’m now using Google Maps for navigation rather than the ridiculously poor Garmin Edge GPS and Google came through and found a series of cycle lanes and paths to get us 30km out the city.  One of the very few times we have found cycling through a city to be relatively pleasant.  Well done Melbourne and Google.

As we were cycling on the outskirts of Melbourne we spotted some ‘Roos. Now we’ve seen lots of countryside ‘Roos but these were the first inner city ‘Roos. 

They were lounging around in the afternoon sun, probably drinking and obviously didn’t have jobs. A couple of them stood up with attitude to guard their ‘corner’ of the neighbourhood and one of them, just outside the photo, was wearing a baseball cap back to front. That’s just what happens to ‘Roos when they reach the city. 
Second day, we continued 104km north to Shepparton via the Freeway M31. It’s really the only feasible cycle route north and it’s okay. A bit like cycling on the hardshoulder of the M6 and not for everyone but it gets the job done. 

Next day was 102km to Berrigan. It was sunny and hot (32c) and we were fried and tired by the time we reached our destination. Just when we needed a motel we found our arrival coincided with Berrigan Races and there’s was no room at the inns. Thankfully, there was a nice campsite and after a shower we headed to the local hotel. Everyone in Berrigan was at this hotel all dressed up like they had been at a wedding and having the biggest party. It was a big hotel with three marquees and I’m sure there must have been about a million people. After a few beers, Susan and I went to the local cafe for food – it was the only place for food. We had cold chips and salt and vingear chicken. Not the food of champions but I must say it’s the first time I’ve had salt and vinegar chicken. Nice. 

We kind of expected what was going to happen next. Although we were sleeping by 10pm we were awake again at 1am.  Yes a large number of guests from the biggest party the world has ever seen were also camping!  No point complaining because I think it was only Susan and I in the whole campsite trying to sleep.

Next morning we were pretty tired when we cycled out the campsite. If zombies could cycle we could have got a part in The Walking Dead. Now that I think of it, imagine how much excitement you could add to a zombie movie if they jumped on bicycles to chase you. It would certainly give the zombies a bit of an edge in a chase scene! 

Our destination for the day was Lockhart, 114km down the road. Although it was Sunday and everything was closed the lovely lady of this general store opened up and made us sandwiches. Thank you. 

 

Unfortunately that day we had a reasonably serious head wind. Now in general day to day cycling we have been pretty fortunate with favourable winds. I don’t really mention these winds as I prefer to have a moan about the wind and this day gave me real reason to moan. 

The wind was classified as moderate Gale Force. I mean what’s that all about? When is a Gale Force wind ever moderate? Oh, it might be moderate to all those sailor boys in their designer ‘Musto’ clothing but to us Lycra cyclists it’s definitely not bl**dy moderate! I think cyclists should ditch the Beaufort Scale and have their own wind classification ranging from ‘can cope with that’ through to ‘ridiculously hard’ and ‘efin unbelievable’. It would certainly be more relevant. 

On our cycle we reached a flat open area where the wind could happily blow to its hearts content.  


Large swathes of Australian countryside have been cleared of trees over the last two hundred years for farming. Sheep farming has now halved in the last 20 years and there are vast tracts of unused empty pastureland. Here’s two lonely trees.


Crossing 15km of this flat plain against ‘ridiculously hard’ head wind was probably the hardest cycle we have had since the last hard cycle I moaned about. Average speed was 9km/hr and that was with all our effort. At times we were blown nearly to a stop. 

Now was the time for Susan and I to dig deep and at moments like these we have a motivational saying. It’s kind of a family motto. ‘When you just can’t keep going. Keep going‘. 

You see I’m right into these management motivational posters. You know the type – the ones with pictures of whale tails and mountains and sunsets with words like ‘attitude’, ‘teamwork’ and ‘success’. Pride of place in our living room, above the fireplace of course, is a poster of a cycle and Everest with our family motto. 

So when Susan looked at me with pain in her eyes she knew what I was thinking. ‘Keep going Susan’ was the message. She just smiled and nodded. ‘Keep going Clif’ she wordlessly replied. So we battled on. We kept going. Honestly, we were an inspiration. 

We made it to a small town called Urana, still 44km from our goal destination Lockhart. The wind was still blowing hard when we turned eastwards onto the Lockhart road. We stopped, looked at each other with pain and tiredness across our faces and started cycling again.  

Actually, we cycled back 500m to the campsite we had just passed! I secured a nice cosy cabin even although we had a tent and within 15 minutes we were sitting eating ice cream. Sweet. 75km cycled that day. 

So we have now changed our family motivational motto to something far more realistic and ordered a new poster for our living room. 

‘When you just can’t keep going. Get a cabin‘. 

After a good nights sleep in our cabin and a huge bowl of porridge we headed for Wagga Wagga. The road was relatively quiet for the 111km and we celebrated being half way from Melbourne to Sydney with beef nachos and beer in the local pub. 

Cycling life is great.

Particularly if you have a cabin. 

4,349 km to date. 

1 cabin to date.