Adelaide-Melbourne Holiday

October 2002

Following riding from Melbourne to Sydney in 2001, this year the Bicycling Australia challenge ride was from Adelaide to Melbourne. To finish off a week of pain, the day after I did the "Around the Bay in a day" ride around Melbourne’s Port Philip bay.

The challenge ride ran along the coast. This avoided a lot of the heavy traffic, or at least they avoided us after being scared off by the "beware of cyclists" signs.

Map of Adelaide to Melbourne cycle tour

Now I am a lazy sod, so I only took the camera out on the short day from Port Fairy to Port Campbell, which was however the most spectacularly scenic (ie the Great Ocean Road).

At the top of the first hill (Hall’s Gap?) was a cliff with lake below. Some great downhill and tail wind leading into Warnambool, where we caught the only real rain of the trip during the morning tea stop.

We were inland for a while passing through dairy cattle fields, then we hit the coastal road with low shrubs leading to the cliffs. Today and the next day, we saw many of the notable structures like the ex-London Bridge, but I skipped the famous lighthouse as I was keenly aware of squandering what little energy I had left. For the whole ride there was quite a lot of wildlife to be seen, unfortunately the close up emu and kangaroo roadkill was off-putting. However at the intersection leading into Port Campbell was a very-much alive echidna. The ride finished at the Exhibition building in Melbourne.

I won the prize at the this year’s dinner for "most improved rider", though I think this was entirely due to increased gravitationally enhanced downhill speeds. For those who are interested in the actual riding statistics. (average 21.8) :-

Description

Date

Distance

Elapsed

Ride Time

Ave

Max

Adel->Victor Harbour

12-Oct

110.1

330

289

22.7

68

VH->Meningie

13-Oct

151

469

374

24.1

58

Meningie-Robe

14-Oct

193.7

630

557

20.8

39

Robe-MtGambier

15-Oct

135.9

416

308

26.4

57

MtGambier-PtFairy

16-Oct

189.4

588

539

21

53

PtFairy-PtCambell

17-Oct

98.47

334

270

21.8

56

PtCampbell-Lorne

18-Oct

142.3

586

495

17.2

70

Lorne-Melb

19-Oct

141.2

510

417

20.3

62

Around the bay

20-Oct

239.6

810

660

21.7

59

Compared to last years Melbourne-Sydney ride (average 19.7km/hr)

Description

Distance

Average

Melb-Yea

99.4

20.7

-Benalla

140.3

23.3

-Beechworth

78.2

21.6

-Corryong

149.3

21.3

-Thredbo

104.2

12.0

-Canberra

140.0 (+bus)

19.0

-Bundanoon

177.0

21.7

-Otford

85.5

20.1

-Rosehill(Sydney)

81.1

17.6 (Police escort)

Many thanks to Phil and Susan of AllTrails for running the challenge rides.

David Horton mailto:dhorton@iprimus.com.au