Day: 064
Date: Thursday, 03 September 2020
Start: Adelaide River crossing on Daly River Road
Finish: Pine Creek
Daily Kilometres: 105 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)
Total Kilometres: 6555
Weather: Hot, sunny and breezy
Accommodation: Cabin
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Muesli
Lunch: Ham, cheese & tomato sandwich/Ham salad sandwich
Dinner: Slow-cooked lamb & vegetables/Chicken parmigiana & vegetables, ice cream
Aches: Nothing significant
Highlight: Finding the Emerald Springs Roadhouse open after 73km.
Lowlight: Finding the Hayes Creek Roadhouse closed after 51km.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We packed up and left our nice, if somewhat dusty, campsite a little before 7am, on a slightly misty morning with a large setting full moon visible to the west. The Daly River Road was very quiet as we pedalled eastwards on the undulating road through hilly woodland. When we turned to the south-east onto Dorat Road, there was even less traffic, and we had that feeling of riding along our own private bike path through the waking bush. Magic.
The road became more hilly the further we went, and I soon felt yesterday's tired legs returning as we laboured up the hills. Even a breakfast stop at the top of a long hill didn't refresh me much, and I was very glad we only had a relatively short day in prospect. From breakfast, we had 12km until we rejoined the Stuart Highway, and on the map, 6km beyond that, was the Hayes Creek Roadhouse. Even though I suspected it might be closed (from previous Googling), we fervently hoped it would be open so we could get some refreshing cold drinks.
Alas, when we got there it was closed, and we continued riding south-east on the hilly highway. The headwind had increased as the sun rose, which made the riding hard. Even downhill we had to pedal, which is a little demoralising. I think one of the rules of Northern Territory cycling is that you can have either flies or a headwind. You can't have both, nor can you have neither!
We had an unscheduled longish break at some roadworks where we had a chance to have a long chat with the young female Irish traffic controller. We could hear the radio chatter for the roadworks crew while talking to her, and it all seemed a bit chaotic. She said you wouldn't believe the abuse she received yesterday when she had to go back along the queuing vehicles to tell them that the wait would be 20 minutes. When we were finally allowed to proceed, we had almost 3km of gradually uphill to negotiate through the roadworks, which we did as fast as our tired legs would let us, not wanting to hold up the waiting northbound traffic too much.
When we passed the closed Hayes Creek Roadhouse, we had seen a sign saying that the Emerald Creek Roadhouse was 22km ahead, but didn't want to get our hopes up. There have been too many closed roadhouses in the NT for us to be confident it would be open. Even when we got there, it looked dark and closed, despite an old "Open" sign outside, but it was indeed open. It was just before noon, so we ordered some sandwiches and purchased very welcome drinks, all of which we consumed at an inside table in air-conditioned comfort on another hot day.
Revived by the food and drink, we rode the remaining hilly 32km, battling the headwind the whole way, and reached Pine Creek and our booked caravan park cabin around 2:15pm. We were very pleased to arrive and enjoyed our showers, and a swim in the camp pool in Julie's case, and had time to relax.
Later we microwaved some dinner in the camp kitchen and had an early night. Now that we are back in Pine Creek, we have completed a Northern Territory loop which included the Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks as well as Darwin.
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