Day: 105
Date: Wednesday, 14 October 2020
Start: Adelaide
Finish: Murray Bridge
Daily Kilometres: 82 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)
Total Kilometres: 10862
Weather: Very warm and mostly sunny
Accommodation: Motel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Huge Italian breakfast
Lunch: Ham, cheese & salad rolls
Dinner: Bangers & mash/Chicken pasta bake, ice-creams
Aches: My hip flexor has been quite sore today
Highlight: Meeting up for breakfast with friends from home, Bec and Ron, who are in Adelaide for their daughter's wedding. It was nice to see some familiar faces and we had a good chat over an exotic and huge Italian breakfast.
Lowlight: None really. It was a tough climb out of Adelaide, but we knew it would be and the beautiful scenery was more than adequate compensation.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We were meeting Central Coast friends, Bec and Ron, for breakfast near our apartment at 8am, so we got up early enough to pack our bikes ready to go before walking to the cafe for a very pleasant catch-up (see above).
After breakfast, we returned to our apartment, checked out at 10:15am and pedalled south-east out of the city on a warm and sunny morning. Our major cycling task for the day, climbing over the shoulder of Mt Lofty on the Crafers bike trail, began after a few gradually uphill kilometres of suburbia. The bike path followed the route of the old major road out of Adelaide to the south-east which had been superseded by a freeway that could be seen for much of the early ascent. The climb never got steep enough to require walking, but it was long and quite warm, and we were envious of the road cyclists whizzing down from the opposite direction. Near the top, there were some spectacular views back over Adelaide through gaps in the peaceful bush bordering the road.
Once we got to the top, we discovered that we could not join the freeway as I had hoped (for easier riding), and had to follow some old roads through the Adelaide hills instead. They took us on a winding and undulating route through the lushly beautiful mountain scenery, past lovely homes and cosy little villages, and on some exhilarating descents.
At Hahndorf, a very touristy and busy village set in an attractive wine district, we bought some lunch which we ate at a park 5km further along the road with 45km to go to Murray Bridge, our goal for the day.
On the Google elevation profile for our day's ride, it showed a steady descent after our climb over Mt Lofty, but it was anything but. It seemed that every little village was in a valley that was preceded by a fast descent and followed by a grinding ascent. There was a sporadic following wind which helped, but we found the hills hard, perhaps because we were out of practice after many days of outback riding.
As the afternoon progressed, the country opened out into farming land and the hills became less frequent. An amusing episode occurred in the last 15km when we passed a guy wearing denim jeans doing something to his road bike by the side of the road. I said "g'day" as we passed but he was unresponsive. Then, a few minutes later he pedalled furiously past us without saying a word and then kept looking back to see where we were. He even took a gravel road shortcut on a sweeping bend to get further ahead. After another 5km, and going up a steady hill, we saw him up ahead walking along the road pushing his bike. He looked back, saw us coming, and jumped back on his bike and began pedalling hard again. We never did catch him.
We reached the town of Murray Bridge around 3:45pm and checked into our motel on the western outskirts of town. Later, we bought some supplies from a nearby small supermarket and microwaved our dinner back at the motel.
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