It pelted down rain last night, but the morning dawned clear and sunny, just the ticket for what we had in mind. Set out at 0700 (again) and stormed the Oxley. Well, not quite “stormed” as the road was still a bit damp from last night’s rain, but it was a clear, traffic-free run and any day on the Oxley is better than a similar day on any other road anyway.
At Wauchope we had coffee, fuelled up and headed to the Pacific. At the roundabout, we parted company, Taina heading south and me north. A boring 140km transport stage to Raleigh and then up the Dorrigo. Unfortunately, the mountain is having lots of road works done due to falling rocks so it was a stop-start run with three lots of traffic lights in the 14km length. However, filtering to the front each time meant that I could get a good run once the lights turned green. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.
Fuel up and the onto the Tyringham Road that links the town of Dorrigo to Waterfall Way. If you’ve not ridden this road, you MUST put it on your bucket list. It’s tight, swutchback-like and unpredicatble, but it’s so much fun. When I got out onto Waterfall, the sign said that it was only 90kms to Grafton, my intended destination for tonight.
There is a lot of logging activity happening there at the moment so the road is a bit cut-up, but there’s still plenty of enjoyment to be had. Unfortunately, the road is becoming more popular with 4WD’s particularly, and several instances of coming around corners and finding a big one on my side of the road sort of cooled my enthusiasm a little. Still another “must-ride” road.
Arrived at Grafton at 1500. Now that seemed like a little bit of a waste of the afternoon so I pushed on to Ballina and stopped here. The Australia Hotel (in no way similar to its namesake in South Grafton), room for $40 and a great bistro. Gotta love country pubs.
635kms total on Sunday, 625kms today.
My internet time is nearly out so that will do. Tomorrow I think I’ll head right up into Qld….shudder!!