Day: 005
Date: Monday, 06 July 2020
Start: Macksville
Finish: Woolgoolga
Daily Kilometres: 105
Total Kilometres: 579
Weather: Cold early, then sunny and mild
Accommodation: Vacation home (kindly offered to us by Julie's friends, Kerrie and Dennis)
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Apple danish/Chocolate cupcake
Lunch: Egg & lettuce roll/Chicken salad roll
Dinner: Lasagne, apple crumble & ice cream
Aches: Both generally fatigued and Julie has a worrying muscle strain above her left knee (not the knee she fell on yesterday).
Highlight: The 15km from Hungry Head to Raleigh meandered along quiet bike paths and back roads, through the picturesque riverfront village of Urunga and alongside lazy aqua rivers fringed with mangroves and green pastureland.
Lowlight: None really
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We had the good and bad of following the recommended NSW Coast Cycleway today. The easier and faster route to our destination, Woolgoolga, would have been along the Sydney-Brisbane freeway. The freeway is straighter, has gentler grades, a smoother surface, and a wide breakdown lane in which you can safely ride. Very tempting. In the end, we did all of the recommended route, apart from the last 24km north from Coffs Harbour where the recommended route closely paralleled the freeway anyway.
From our motel in Macksville we went straight onto a bike path alongside the quiet and dark Nambucca River and then followed a mix of bike paths and roads into the pretty resort of Nambucca Heads. It was a beautiful ride, despite some solid hills in town and when we detoured to a spectacular lookout.
After a breakfast sitting in the warmth of the morning sun outside a bakery in the village's main street, we rejoined the old Pacific Highway, renamed the Ginagay Way, and paralled the freeway northwards. Although our road was quieter, it definitely had more hills, and our legs and lungs got a good workout.
We were happy to turn off that road towards Hungry Head, though there were still some hills, and soon found our way onto a quiet bike path that wended its way north to Urunga. We took a break there to admire the beautiful waterfront which featured an inviting swimming area with crystal clear water (we could see large fish) and a long timber walkway across the estuary out to the ocean beach with breakers visible in the distance. Over the years, I have often stopped at the pretty little rest stop on the highway at Urunga when travelling between Brisbane and Sydney, and never realised what I was missing just a kilometre or two away.
After Urunga, we crossed the Kalang River, and then rode along the very quiet Yellow Rock Road which followed an arm of the river. It was a virtually traffic-free route that passed some ideally-situated isolated caravans, campervans and shacks that looked perfect for people wanting to live "off the grid". Then it was back on the hilly and enervating Ginagay Way paralleling the freeway.
We finally reached our next recommended detour via Sawtell and Toormina to Coffs Harbour, but it turned out to be less interesting, busier than our earlier detours (but still hilly) Eventually we reached the Coffs Harbour jetty, and after a brief break, rode through suburbia to a small shopping centre where we bought and ate some lunch.
After lunch, and few hundred metres riding further along the road, we visited a bike shop to buy a couple of things, including two tubes of Aussie Butt Cream (his and hers) to help with saddle soreness. Shortly afterwards, we joined the freeway for the last leg north to Woolgoolga, which passed fairly quickly, despite some more hills. By this time, Julie was dealing with a thigh strain that was making the hills even harder work.
At Woolgoolga, we picked up some snacks and supplies for dinner on our way to the holiday home where we had been invited to stay, and arrived there soon after 3:30pm, both feeling quite tired and looking forward to having tomorrow off.
No comments:
Post a Comment