What a great time with Maree and Ian (and Garth and Harrison, the little cuties). Gladly drank the bottle of wine I'd been carrying for two days. Woke up to a beautiful day although a bit chilly in the morning it climbed to a perfect riding temperature. We were both a little nervous about todays ride as the previous three days were pretty tough but it turned out really well.
Northcliffe to Pemberton was nice, up and down but nice with not much traffic on the narrow road.
You can tell I found the 'video' option on our camera :)
More riding through forest
We make a point of getting right off the bitumin when there are oncoming cars or trucks. Got to Pemberton and had a yummy devonshire tea at a cafe.
Chatted to a cyclist from Perth who was most intrigued with the Rohloff hubs on our bikes.
From Pemby we headed to the back roads via Big Brook Dam and we hit the steepest hills of our trip so far.
Made lots of use of 1st gear today. Big Brook Dam was great, we had a quick rinse off and then set off again with the road turning to dirt, and pretty steep dirt which saw us pushing our bikes up one of the first dirt hills.
Had a look at 'The Big Tree' (yep that's what it's called on the map) which is a big Karri tree.
A little further down the road we turned onto Big Tree Road and it looked pretty dodgy. The grader had been through recently so the surface was very loose and the first hill was a beauty which meant more walking. I got to the top and then went back down to help Sandy with her bike. At this stage we had about 8km of this road and we were getting even mnore worried but all was OK as things leveled out a bit and the road surface became firmer.
Very glad to have the GPS today as the back roads on our paper map dont really match reality very much and at times we were concerned about where we were heading. The GPS maps are crap but better than the paper ones we have. By the way when there is mobile coverage the Google maps on the iPhone are better than the maps I paid lots of money for on the Garmin.
Anyway after a bloody hard slog we got to Fonty's Pool springing out of the bush onto the bitumin for the last four km to the caravan park.
The campsite at Fonty's
Had a swim and some well earnt snacks.
That's Sandy lounging in the pool
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