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 102 - Orroroo to Auburn

Day:  102

Date:  Sunday, 11 October 2020

Start:  Orroroo

Finish:  Auburn

Daily Kilometres:  156 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)

Total Kilometres:  10670

Weather:  Cold early, then sunny and warm

Accommodation:  Motel

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pies

  Lunch:  Toasted lamb, cheese & tomato roll/Hot lamb roll with gravy

  Dinner:  Fish, chips & salad/Hamburger & chips, ice cream

Aches:  Nothing to speak of

Highlight:  Yet again, a beautiful dawn.  As we rode out of Orroroo on a very quiet road, the sun turned high clouds pink on the horizon ahead and then slowly lit up the gentle rural landscape around us..

Lowlight:  An aggrieved magpie swooped on me a couple of times, just missing my helmet, as we rode down a stretch of road bordered by magnificent old eucalypts.  Julie, who was riding behind, enjoyed the show, but failed to get any pictures.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We left a sleeping Orroroo and headed south on a very quiet road into a magnificent sunrise (see above).  Our target for the day was the small town of Auburn in the Clare Valley wine district, 156km  away.  The weather forecast was for a following/cross breeze, but nobody had told the weather gods, and a light head-breeze and very gradual uphill made the first few hours relatively hard work, but the beautiful rural scenery compensated.  The rolling hills gradually changed from sheep grazing to crops, the road was often lined with eucalypts, and there were more farms and houses along the way, some of them very old.

After 56km, we stopped for breakfast in the town of Jamestown, whose signage proudly claimed it to be the birthplace of the iconic Australian, R.M. Williams.  Little was open in the old town, but there was a small supermarket on the fringe with hot pies, so we bought a couple and ate them in warming sunshine on a cold morning at an old wooden picnic table outside the shire offices.

As we continued on, the road was more tree-lined and the surrounding fields more verdant.  Thirty kilometres after a morning break in the little town of Spalding, we entered the attractive Clare Valley and began to see vineyards and wineries as the hills closed in on the road. The regional town of Clare was busy with visitors, many no doubt from Adelaide  enjoying a beautiful warm sunny Sunday in the country.

We bought some lunch from a very popular bakery and ate it in a small nearby park before buying a few things from the adjacent supermarket and setting out to ride the last 24km to Auburn.  To Julie's disgust, there was yet another long hill (there had been a few earlier in the day), but soon we were rolling down the other side and reached the very small town of Auburn about 3:30pm.  We found our motel, where the proprietor had left our room unlocked as he was going to Adelaide, and settled in.

After lazing around for a few hours, we phone-ordered take-out for dinner from the only such shop open in town and later Julie walked a few hundred metres to collect it.  There followed another quiet evening and another early night.

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