Day: 101
Date: Saturday, 10 October 2020
Start: Wilpena Pound
Finish: Orroroo
Daily Kilometres: 163 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)
Total Kilometres: 10514
Weather: Cold early, then sunny and mild
Accommodation: Cabin
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pie/Chicken & lettuce sandwich
Lunch: Ham, cheese & tomato sandwich/Ham, cheese & pickle sandwich
Dinner: Pizza/Beef schnitzel, salad & chips, lemon tart & ice cream/chocolate lava cake & ice cream
Aches: Nothing significant.
Highlight: For the first hour of the day, we were treated to a beautiful sunrise, with the rays lighting up the bluffs of Wilpena Pound in a deep orange as we pedalled below through the dark cypress pine forest on a road with no other traffic.
Lowlight: For the first hour the day it was absolutely freezing. Hands and feet were numb, and we relished every sliver of sunlight the forest and mountains allowed through until it was high enough to warm us without interference.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
It was very cold when we woke, and that might explain the hour and a half it took us to pack up camp before we left at 6:45am. The sun had not yet cleared the horizon and we steeled ourselves against the cold as we pedalled out across the plain and turned south down the eastern side of the Wilpena Pound. Compensation for the cold was the magnificent sunrise we were treated to on the walls of the Pound, and the serenity of the cypress pine forest.
Eventually, the sun rose high enough to begin thawing us out making the rest of the first 56km to Hawker even more enjoyable. At Hawker, where we had stayed on our way north four days ago, we called in at the service station and bought breakfast and supplies for later in the day as we did not expect to see any more stores. As we pulled into the service station, two couples came over for a chat about our trip and we learned the males were about to start a ride along the 900km Mawson Trail that runs south from the Flinders Ranges to the coast. Another one on the bucket list.
From Hawker we continued south with the aid of a nice tail breeze and entered an area of rolling red soil hills, with a light covering of new grass, perhaps courtesy of the recent rain, flanked by the mountains of the southern Flinders Ranges to the wast. There were old crumbling farmhouses here and there, perhaps a sign that the land was not particularly fertile. We passed through the tiny hamlet of Cradock and, after one break en route, reached the slightly larger town of Carrieton where we stopped for lunch in a well-kept picnic area. The whole of the tiny town looked well-kept, but most businesses were shuttered and keeping the place alive looked likely to require a big effort.
After Carrieton, the roadside fields became more lush and the farms looked more prosperous as we rode the last 36km of the day to the regional town of Orroroo where we arrived at 3:45pm. It looked pretty quiet too, though the lady at the caravan park where we had booked a cabin insisted that it was a very busy and lively town, just not on Saturday afternoons on the final weekend of the school vacation. She may have been biased, having lived here for 35 years and having two sons each owning one of the two pubs in town.
After checking in, we spent thirty minutes washing our very muddy bikes using a hose in the campground, conscious that we were taking them in for a service on Monday in Adelaide. We then showered and did some trip-planning before wandering down to the closest pub for a very filling dinner. Then it was back to the cabin to watch my team win a finals match on the TV, the icing on top of another very good day.
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