Day 374 | Weary Beach: yeah, well named
47 km | zzOz total: 10,229 km
A couple of days ago I was sitting munching my lunch at Noah Beach when I saw the flash of what I thought looked like 2 shiny new yellow Ortlieb panniers.
I was too far away from the road to whistle out, seeing two bike riders is, after all, cause for rare celebration. Then I tarried looking at my swamps, etc. But of course the road being a singular path we eventually met up at PKs, ended up sharing a campsite.
2 gals, first time bike tourers, a month into their Airlie Beach to Darwin trip, vacillating between beating a retreat to Cairns, or, just maybe, on to Cooktown. With those brand new purpose built touring bikes, Rohloffs, bulletproof sealed bearing touring wheels, actually all the gear, they just should give it a go, after all they could just turn back if they didn’t like it.
True to form they sped past me while I was off on one of my usual beachside distractions.
To be honest the Bloomfield Track isn’t the ideal introduction to off-main-road riding: it’s a roller coaster of epic proportion, not so much in distance or even particularly in height. The issue for the bike tourer is that the designers of the road preferred getting from A to B in the most direct fashion, the steepness of the road is, err, legendary.
The Donovan Range is the warmup, a substantial push-a-thon, but shortly there comes the Cowie Range which is the full on, 11 out of 10 required for effort. The start is in concrete that makes someone with a construction background question exactly how they managed to pour it and keep it on the hill.
It’s steep.
Like 25º+.
I’d laughed at the rumours of 30º, I know a standard staircase is around 34º and it ain’t feasible for even these 4WD trucks to get up that.
You have to get down like in a scrum machine with your bike, 10 m at a time with my load, having earlier decided to jettison excess water for the day. I was close to taking off the rear panniers but thought if they started rolling I’d never see them as they bounced into the bush.
It went on a bit.
The 30º section eventuated but was on the downward progression, I was real pleased I didn’t swap out my carbide sided rims in Cairns, the brakes held but in the wet it might be a different proposition.
Then it was all over, the 8.4 kph part, that’s when in motion and a goodly proportion wasn’t, the road levelled out, became sealed and there was that usual, if not inevitable, easier 10 km that you get during the day.
I saw the gals later in the day as I headed down to my beachside campsite.
Grinning.
It never seems as bad when you’ve finished the day’s effort.