Julie and I were supposed to be hiking the 5,000km Continental Divide Trail in the US in 2020, but COVID-19 derailed that plan. Instead, we will have an adventure in Australia, circumnavigating the country on our bikes, a distance of about 16,500km taking approximately five and a half months. We will use minor roads where possible and occasionally catch ferries across rivers and inlets to avoid busier inland routes. We will camp some of the time and stay in motels, hotels, etc, at others. There will be stretches of up to five days with no accommodation or resupply available, so we will need to be self-sufficient.

Round Australia Bike Ride - Day 010 - Coomera to Esk

Day:  010

Date: Saturday, 11 July 2020

Start:  Coomera

Finish:  Esk

Daily Kilometres:  145

Total Kilometres:  1074

Weather:  Mild and overcast with occasional drizzle in the morning, and mostly sunny and warm in the afternoon

Accommodation:  Motel

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pastie/Sausage roll

  Lunch:  Chicken & bacon toasted subs

  Dinner:  Hamburgers with the lot, chips, ice cream

Aches:  Nothing significant

Highlight:  The Brisbane Valley Rail Trail, despite being gradually uphill, was a beautiful ride through rural areas, arid eucalypt forests, small villages, and remnants from the old railway including some stations.

Lowlight:  The 60km from Beenleigh to Ipswich through Brisbane's south-eastern suburbs on a busy Saturday morning was very tedious, made more so by the number of hills we had to climb, and the number of traffic lights that impeded our progress.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

It was a day of miscalculations.  We planned to ride about 140km from the top of the Gold Coast across Brisbane's south-eastern suburbs to Ipswich, near where we would join the Brisbane Valley Rail Trail (BVRT) which runs north-west from there for 161km.  Our target for the day was the small village of Esk, where I had booked a motel room.  It seemed very doable and I even surmised we might have an early finish and have time to do some laundry.

The first 25km north from Coomera along the Old Pacific Highway on a cool morning was pleasant enough despite the undulations.  It was obviously a popular cycling route and we saw many cyclists heading south from Brisbane for their Saturday morning rides.  The last section was through large industrial areas, but they were quiet and the riding was easy.

At Beenleigh, we turned westwards towards Ipswich and encountered increasing traffic and some enervating hills.  Everybody was out doing their Saturday morning shopping, and no doubt cursing the two loaded cyclists labouring up the hills on the busy roads.  The route, which we mapped out on Maps.me, was necessarily complicated in parts and we lost some time constantly checking directions.

Despite all of this, we still reached Ipswich more or less on schedule a little before 1pm.  We hoped to find somewhere to get lunch there, but the shops were at the bottom of a big hill and we missed a deli as we whizzed through at speed (always reluctant to stop at the bottom of a hill).  We continued out the western side of Ipswich confident we would find somewhere to get lunch on our way to Wulkaraka Station where the BVRT started.  Alas, we were wrong, and we started the BVRT with a few hundred mils of Diet Coke, some water, and some jelly beans.

The BVRT was beautiful (see above) but it was generally slow going.  Mostly, it was stony or hard-packed clay, but it was often rough, and because we were riding up the Brisbane River valley, it was frequently gradually uphill.  It was a lot slower than anticipated (based on rail trails ridden in Victoria), and it became apparent that we would not cover the 67km of BVRT to Esk in daylight.

The day was warm, and we were finding it hard work, with the added pressure of not wanting to be too late.  We reached the small village of Ferndale around 3pm and felt we might be revived by having a late lunch and replenishing our Diet Coke supplies.  We bought some subs at a Subway and ate them in an attractive nearby little park watching children have a good time in the playground on a pleasantly warm and sunny afternoon.

Then it was back to business on the BVRT.  We rode into the setting sun on a beautiful evening, but still at a very slow pace.  Occasionally, there were gullies to be negotiated, where bridges had once carried the railway, and we often had to dismount to climb out of them.  Once it became dark, our pace slowed even further, and we were very happy to finally reach Esk at 7pm.

We checked into our room, very tired and dehydrated (145km and 1400m of climbing), with plans to have an easier day tomorrow.

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1 comment:

  1. UnknownJuly 12, 2020 at 12:35 PM

    Well done on your riding progress ! The photos look amazing! Excellent job. Legends! 🙌🏼
    Jay

    ReplyDelete

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