Day: 107
Date: Friday, 16 October 2020
Start: Policeman Point
Finish: Robe
Daily Kilometres: 148 (click for Julie's Strava and photos and here for Robe sightseeing)
Total Kilometres: 11143
Weather: Cold and overcast in the morning, mild and mostly overcast in the afternoon.
Accommodation: Motel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Ham salad roll/Cheese salad roll
Lunch: Pastie & donut/Sausage roll & vanilla slice
Dinner: Bangers & mash/Chicken Kiev & vegetables, ice cream & chocolate pudding
Aches: Nothing significant
Highlight: The morning riding with Coorong National Park on one side and grassy farmland or dense coastal forest on the other. We only got glimpses of The Coorong (lagoon) itself with much of the ride through a tunnel gnarly malaleuca forest that opened occasionally on the left side to reveal low hills of grassy farmland, some of it almost golf course-like. It went on and on, bringing home how vast and isolated this area is. As a bonus, we even saw three emus.
Lowlight: We were dive-bombed by magpies several times during the day. Having read that a Victorian man had been hospitalised earlier in the week after being attacked in both eyes by a magpie, there was a certain tension as the birds repeatedly swooped, but we survived unscathed.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
Although we had a relatively short 140km day planned, the forecast was for a cold day with headwinds and we were a little apprehensive about how hard the day would be. We decided an earlier start was required, though not too early given the forecast temperatures. Accordingly, we were on the road soon after 6am in chilly conditions (feels like 5°C, said the weather app) to find there was a headwind, but not as strong as feared.
We rode for a little over two hours along the edge of the Coorong National Park enjoying the remote coastal area's views and forests (see above) before stopping in a rest area for breakfast. It was somewhat protected, so wasn't freezing, but was cold enough for us to decide to leave our extra layers of clothing on for the next leg. We split the 50km to the town of Kingston SE from our breakfast stop into two with a break in another chilly rest area. The country was becoming more rural, but there remained a long line of high sand dunes to our right, beyond which was the ocean, and there were still ponds, lagoons and wetlands around.
At the outskirts of Kingston, reached a little before noon, we made a detour through the small town to the coast where we had a look at the grassy foreshore reserve with no discernible beach and the relocated (into town) Cape Jaffa lighthouse. We didn't hang around, and returned to a bakery we had seen on the highway for a nice lunch made even better by the heated interior where we dined.
We thought we might need to break the remaining 46km into two legs given the wind was still blowing, but it wasn't too bad. Initially, it was through flat verdant farmland, but became hillier closer to Robe with some vineyards and pine plantations.
Robe is an historic small port (with a foreshore monument to the thousands of Chinese gold miners who landed there in the mid-1800s before trekking to the Victorian goldfields) which has become a popular beach resort. We stopped in at our booked motel at 2:45pm, unloaded our bikes, and then spent an hour riding through town and around the adjacent cape known as The Tip on a challenging little bike path admiring the jagged limestone coastal cliffs and offshore rock formations.
Back at the motel, we did the usual showers and shopping before eating a microwaved dinner before watching some televised football and retiring.
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