Day: 111
Date: Tuesday, 20 October 2020
Start: Bordertown
Finish: Pinnaroo
Daily Kilometres: 132 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)
Total Kilometres: 11615
Weather: Very cold early, then mild and sunny
Accommodation: Motel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Egg & lettuce sandwiches
Lunch: Chicken schnitzel & mayo sandwich/Chicken & avocado sandwich
Dinner: Tuna mornay/Fettucine carbonara, ice cream
Aches: Nothing significant
Highlight: As we rode out of Bordertown in light fog we saw a fog bow, or white rainbow. A rare sight, to me, anyway.
Lowlight: It was very cold this morning as we left under clear sunny skies in light fog, and our fingers and feet were soon frozen.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
As we had a relatively short day (~130km) planned, and the overnight temperature was forecast to fall to 3°C, we decided to leave a little later. This proved to be a wise move, as it was still very cold at 6:45am when we left Bordertown after stopping in at a service station to buy drinks and sandwiches for breakfast and lunch. There were no places to resupply on today's route, so we needed to be self-sufficient.
The clear skies and layered fog across the farmland as the sun rose was a beautiful scene, despite the cold, and although we were soon riding in the fog, it wasn't thick enough to make us feel unsafe in the light traffic. After a few kilometres, we turned north off what was the main Melbourne-Adelaide highway to follow the sign to Pinnaroo, our goal for the day. For the first hour it was very cold riding, particularly where the roadside trees cast long shadows from the rising sun.
It was noticeable, the further north we rode, that the roadside trees became smaller and gnarlier, the farmland more open, and the soil more sandy. There was little traffic and for long periods we had the road to ourselves. We stopped for breakfast around 9am, and although we had warmed up, we sought a spot with some sun.
On resuming, we entered the Ngarkat Conservation Area, where scrubby arid country stretched out as far as the eye could see both sides of the road with the occasional sand dune visible. It was quite a contrast to the countryside of the previous day. We have seen quite a few squashed skink lizards over the past week, so it was nice to encounter, at one point, two live ones on the road. To give them a chance of a longer life we stopped and, after photographs, shepherded them off the road. They moved very slowly, probably because they were cold, so it's not surprising we see so many squashed ones.
After another break by the roadside, it was getting warm enough to strip down to our T-shirts, the first time for a few days, and we continued the pleasant undulating ride through the Conservation Area, stopping occasionally to admire the view, although there were no really high points. Around 1pm, we exited the Conservation Area and entered a rural landscape with huge fields on low rolling hills. Shortly after, we found a nice spot at a field entrance, with just 30 kilometres to Pinnaroo, and had an unusually leisurely lunch on a very pleasant day.
The last leg, which included a long stretch of roadworks (and the usual chat with a traffic controller), passed quite quickly and we reached our booked motel in Pinnaroo at 2:45pm. There are police vehicles here, no doubt connected with the COVID controls at the Victorian border, just a few kilometres away. The COVID outbreak in Victoria seems to be almost under control (just one new case yesterday), and there is lots of news chatter about when restrictions there will be eased further and what this means for travel from there to other States, but no firm commitments. Unless something changes in the next 24 hours we will be turning for home the following day.
There is a large service station next to the motel and, after showering, we bought microwaveable frozen dinner from there, along with sandwiches for tomorrow's breakfast. There was then time to relax before dinner and an early night after a very pleasant day.
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