Day: 038
Date: Saturday, 08 August 2020
Start: Croydon
Finish: Normanton
Daily Kilometres: 155 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)
Total Kilometres: 4112
Weather: Mild to very warm and sunny all day
Accommodation: Motel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Shared egg, lettuce & pineapple sandwich and chilli chicken wrap, and muffins
Lunch: Chilli chicken wraps
Dinner: Fettucine carbonara/Sundried tomato & chicken pasta, ice cream
Aches: Nothing significant
Highlight: Once again, the breaks we had during the day were special. Even though we enjoy the bush and have plenty of peace and quiet while cycling, the rests, when we can stretch out, relax, and savour the silence, broken only by the quiet rustle of leaves in the breeze or the squabbling of some birds, is magic.
Lowlight: None really.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We were a bit slower to get going this morning and it was about 6:40am before we cycled out of the caravan park and out of the tiny town of Croydon to the sound of a few barking dogs in the pre-dawn gloom. Maybe it was because it was the third ~150km day in a row, but more likely it was because we expected the day's ride to be relatively easy with flat terrain and a breeze that was either cross or following. And maybe it was because we had decided to have tomorrow off in Normanton while we sort out our supplies for the next week's riding.
Our expectations of easy riding were not disappointed and we cruised along at a good pace on an almost traffic-free road for the first couple of hours, stopping for breakfast around 9am with 100km to go. There weren't as many animals around, just a couple of wallabies and the usual birds in the savannah woodland that bordered our route all day.
That early good progress continued for the rest of the day, with thirty-minute breaks taken after every ninety minutes under the shade of a roadside tree on our little blue groundsheet. The routine is usually to eat one of the snacks we are carrying, drink lots (flavoured milk/Powerade/Coke), and check Maps.me to see how far we have to go, and in Julie's case, the elevation profile. There's usually five minutes free to have a pretend nap as well before we hit the road again, and then it's a few hundred metres before the legs start working properly.
As we neared Normanton, we spotted a distant flock of brolgas near a station dam, which was a highlight (though we had seen one solo earlier in the day). Neither of us are ornithologists, which is a bit of a handicap when we see so many different kinds of birds each day, but that doesn't stop us enjoying and appreciating the variety.
We reached the sleepy Saturday-afternoon Normanton around 3pm and checked into our motel which is attached to the town's Purple Pub. After showers, we went to the small grocery next door for some drinks and microwaveable dinner, and while there, checked out what was on offer that we could carry for the next week. There's another small grocery about a kilometre away that we might also need to visit tomorrow to optimise our choices.
Normanton is a decision point for us, and we have decided to continue following Highway 1 and the Savannah Way north-west to Borroloola in the Northern Territory (NT). There are just a few tiny resupply points, and none for the last 320km (with uncertain water). The road is also notoriously bad and mostly unsealed, so the riding will be slow. It's not a route many cyclists take. The alternative is to head 400km south from here to Cloncurry and then Mount Isa and from there across to Tennant Creek in the NT before turning north. This route is all on sealed road, with more resupply options, but is a lot further. I have ridden it several times before, and although it appeals from a "security" perspective, we have decided to get out of our comfort zone and take the challenging route.
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