Coddiwomple

Mudgee - around town 16km With the eminent disappearance of wine regions the further north we head, we better have a good taste around Mudgee. I start the day by chasing down Rosie to announce that we are staying another night and jog to the supermarket for some breakfast supplies.  There is little we know about the wines from here. Which is always an exciting starting point for a tasting. Craigmoor Wines is the oldest winery in the region and would have gone through a major transformation since the takeover by the Oatley family. In case Oatley rings a bell, yes, the late Robert Oatley AO was an Australian entrepreneur, perhaps best known for owning the yacht Wild Oats XI, multiple winner of the Sydney - Hobart race. He also bought Hamilton Island in Queensland. But I digress. The family's name is well-known in the wine industry (Rosemount Estate in the Hunter Valley and Robert Oatley Wines in the Margaret River) - so they know what they are doing when it comes to running a success...

Goolma to Mudgee, 52kms. Setting the scene This blog is being brought to you direct from Three Tails Brewery and Smokehouse.  And maybe it's the hunger of a cyclist speaking but OMG the beer and the food are so good!  Kerstin, after two beers, is now perusing the whiskey list, what goes with Snickerdoodle Pie? After a blessed dry night under the shelter of the Goolma Tennis Club, we awoke to clear skies and very squishy surrounds.  The large pile of laundry was packed, soggy and gritty, and we decided to stay off the back roads, the mud!  Thus we pedalled with purpose towards Mudgee.  Actually we pedalled with such purpose that not a single photo was taken.  This is probably because a).the wind was against us and b).the traffic was heavy and the shoulder often disappeared.  Much concentration was required to stay upright and safe.  Despite this there was a moment when Kerstin hit an uneven surface and almost toppled into a ditch. ...

Lake Burrendong - Wellington - Goolma  83km I just asked Louise "what shall I write about in today's post?" To which she answered "just write it rained all day." It is tempting to leave it at that.  It rained all day. When we arrive in the town of Wellington, 28km into today's ride, we think it might be time to pull out the rain coat. This was more to keep warm during the needed visit to the supermarket. It's always freezing in these things, as soon as you reach for the bananas. We balance our stocked up food supplies to the bikes and play a public round of "how are we are going to fit everything into our bags?" which always creates a bit of attention. A few passers-by stop for a friendly chat, a few questions and some well wishes. I liked the guy with the Kiwi accent, half of the front row of his teeth missing, with the stature of an All Blacks player, but showing a genuine interest of what we are doing. When he said "ride safely" it...

Orange to Lake Burrendong 87km. After yesterday's crisis of confidence today the universe delivered a restoration of purpose, signs abounded that we are on the right path.  Maybe not literally, we had to reroute twice for Google is not great at bicycle mapping.  Despite yesterday's rain, today we woke to sunshine, this is always uplifting, so we rode out of Orange hopeful for a good day on the pedals. The roads out of Orange still don't reveal any vineyards, but we are noticed with excitement by a whole gallop of greyhounds.  They race across the paddock to greet us with curiosity and happy tails.  With greyhound manners they neither bark or force the fence but they obviously enjoy our company, and we theirs.  Leaving our dear Rapha at home was wrenching.  But it's lovely to meet such a happy bunch of hounds. The rain clouds on the horizon, would remain out of reach all day, the sun finding us speeding along with the fasted average pace we've managed so far...

Orange NSW  -  0 km Against (some or all) expectations, today's post isn't a summary of wine tastings and cellar door visits. Although the writing is fuelled by a delicious and intriguing Pinot Noir from the local RIKARD  label, a creation by winemaker William Rikard-Bell, wine 'only' appeared as supporting act today. In color psychology, orange is often described as energetic, bright, happy and uplifting, calling to mind feelings of enthusiasm and excitement. And that's not exactly where we were at, with our emotions this morning. We both, albeit from different angles, immersed into a conversation about the most personal aspects of project Coddiwomple so far. This raw and open insight needed more space for contemplations and wine tasting wasn't going to be a good environment for it. We decided to spend the day low-key and low-km (no riding), allowing space for reading, writing and talking. Before I continue, please rest assured that all is good. The Orange Visi...

Blayney to Orange, via Millthorpe 46km Despite the cold and damp we awaken to this morning, Kerstin is excited!  Another wine region awaits and we have a booking for a tasting at Slow Wines in Millthorpe at 1100.  This is great, as Millthorpe is only 13kms away, so we can have a Saturday morning lie in.  Which for me, just means I still wake up with the birds but I get to indulge in some reading while snug and warm in the sleeping bag.  I will have another book review for my 'Adventures in Literature' soon. The ride out to Millthorpe is surprisingly busy, but people are kind and mostly patient as we trundle along.  The cellar door opens at 1100 so with Swiss precision timing we arrive at 1100 on the dot, this is quite difficult to do when travelling by bike.  The vigneron,  business owner and cellar door hand, Terry, is ready and waiting.  It's an excellent cellar experience.  Terry is refreshing in both his sharing of knowledge and desire to...

Bathurst - Wimbledon - Blayney 55km The decision to slow down our approach to the Orange wine region so we can reach some promising cellar doors when the palate is apparently most receptive (late morning) adds a shorter and slightly less hilly day to our tour. Instead of going all the way to Orange, today's terminal is the town of Blayney , an unexpected treasure of a small town, with a number of claims to fame, such as Australia's largest inland container terminal and the Blayney Wind Farm, the largest of its kind in Australia.  But I know, you want to know about Wimbledon. And so did I. We get there in a minute but first, we go to brag. Not the boastful kind. BRAG stands for Bathurst Regional Arts Gallery and with a couple hours to spare in the morning, given the shorter ride, and not shy to immerse ourselves in a bit of culture, we step into the gallery. The current exhibition is a bit beyond my limited understanding of visual arts (in this case stop motion animation) but we...

Lithgow to Bathurst 71km The day did not start auspiciously.  The rain finally found us, after much ducking and weaving across SE Australia on our part.  It was drizzling as we rode out of the servicable Lithgow Hotel and Motel, but within 200m it was a deluge, soggily we trundled onwards.  Out of Lithgow, heading west "we met again Great Western Hwy". Kerstin, still smiling Not wanting to spend all day in the company of traffic, to be fair the truckies are the best drivers out there, but beware the panicking geriatric, especially if towing a caravan.  A detour, an extra 20km, and we quickly found ourselves off the beaten track.  It rained as we rode past Wallace Lake, the vista somewhat disturbed the enormous coal power station right next door.  It rained as we rode through Portland 'the town that built Sydney.'  Home to Australia's first cement works, which operated from 1902 til 1991.  There are certain bonuses to being wet, one is that you rea...

Katoomba - Lithgow (via Brown's Gap Road) A few days ago, an elderly man in the car park at Springwood tried to say something positive about our road ahead. He said "ah well, at least it's all downhill from Blackheath". Ha! That is only true if you don't go further than Hartley, which sits at the bottom of a jaw-dropping descent out of the Blue Mountains into the Central Tablelands region. But if one continues to Lithgow, then there's another climb awaiting you, one that will leave you breathless.  Not funny. The day starts early and in a hurry. After a more sleepless than sleepy night due to heavy winds giving our new tent a good test, we fear the BOM's weather predictions for thunderstorm, flash flooding and possibly hail may spoil the pleasure of leaving the Blue Mountains. Precautionary, we book a motel room in Lithgow because the weather doesn't look promising there either.  I had forgotten how beautiful and spectacular the Blue Mountains are. But...

Woodford to Katoomba 30km Those thirty kms were hard earned, they were all uphill, and not just some piddling 3% gradient.  Today was an awful lot of "Oh my God, this is painful, sweaty and I'm panting like I never did when running a marathon.  Why did I think this was a good idea?"  I will never have to go through labour and delivery, but today I gained a bit of insight.  Nothing to do but go forwards, even if it means getting off and pushing.  (Sound familiar Mothers?) Kerstin did her best to rally the troops (me) and eventually resorted to bribery.  We stopped for a long lunch in Wentworth Falls, which included a visit to a very authentic German bakery.  Full of pretzels and coffee we decided to ditch the scenic route (17km) for the more straightforward Great Western Hwy (10km) to take us into Katoomba. Authentic pretzel and eater The campground was right across the road from the Prince Henry Cliff walk, so once ourlegs had recovered we took an afte...

Newtown - Emu Plains (train) - Woodford - Murphy's Glen Campground (NP) 45km It wasn't going to be easy to leave Newtown, both emotionally and physically. The physical part was looming beyond Emu Plains train station, the emotional bit had to be managed on the train ride out west. But "what has to be, has to be" - that is the freestyle translation of today's title, a saying in 'Plattdeutsch' (this one is for you, dear Aunty Ulrike and Uncle Willi). I spotted it in the German Club in Sydney where we enjoyed our farewell dinner with Liz and Jackie.  Farewell Newtown (and Ziggy) It all starts on a good note at Emu Plains station. A sign in the parking area gives us a funny photo opportunity and a way to kiss the great city of Sydney goodbye... Better do what the sign says It was all going well until Kerstin didn't finish reading the directions... "cross over M4 and turn right onto motorway" - I ignore the turn right bit and we end up cycling in ...

 " In the cookie of life, friends are chocolate chips ."  Salman Rushdie It's safe to say that we probably would have bypassed Sydney, as it's not the most bike friendly city (although it's getting better), but we could not skip the chocolate chips that are Liz and Jackie. The best thing we got out of the four years we lived in Sydney was our friendship.  I mean the harbour bridge is great, the Opera house too, the access to art, live performance and music is unbeatable.  But the friendship is the only one of those things worth braving the traffic. Who else but your friends will welcome you with joy and open arms despite the sticky stinkiness of days on the bike without a shower?  Who will open not just their home but their lives for sharing?  All the while making you feel like a part of the daily business of life and the extraordinary happenings while we were there.   We celebrated Jackie's birthday with an adventure to a new restaurant, where in...

Newtown / Sydney This is just a quick heads up to shed some light where we are heading from here. The plan is to depart from Sydney on Monday 21/3. We will take the train to Penrith and we hope to reach the Blue Mountains (Katoomba) after a day of climbing. Westbound will be the flavour of the coming days, as far as Orange (wine region!). From there we are heading north/north east to Mudgee (next wine region). And then we might follow the happy country music tunes into Tamworth. Thanks to our dear friends Sarah and Ben, the town of Bingara will be an overnight stop and is at the moment the most northerly destination in NSW. NSW map studies Stay tuned for more stories of roam and rove!

Newtown / Sydney  We are all familiar with the (apparently Swedish) proverb " Shared joy is a double joy, shared sorrow is half a sorrow". So far this communication outlet has allowed us to mainly share the joyous aspects of our travels. And the many kind messages we receive from you tell us that there is truth to the saying. Today, we are sharing the other end, the sorrow one. When we first went public with our plan for 2022, we promoted the Coddiwomple project including a tandem. This wasn't just some crazy, unfounded element but the result of a decent amount of trial and error riding on a patched up tandem around our local home turf and some time consuming research on how to have a tandem built that would be fit for purpose. Back in June 2021 we started the conversation with a Melbourne based bicycle frame builder who is well regarded for his custom made steel frame bicycles - including tandems. Technical details and specifications were established, and while he would ...

Newtown / Sydney  The happy arrival in Sydney also comes with a to do list that Louise diligently scribbles on an envelope that contained the voting material for the upcoming South Australian election. Faith and Hope (our bikes) need a well deserved serving of TLC, Louise needs a new helmet and Louise and Kerstin need a new mobile home (tent). There is only so much Gorilla tape you can fix a tent with.  We also need to start thinking "which way from here" given that some desired destinations have fallen out of the equation due to the bad weather episodes that have have turned parts of this state into a natural disaster zone. Which I don't want to sound like it is an inconvenience. It is a living part of "coddiwomple", the destination often vague, but the travel and planning are done with good intentions.  The revenge of Analog - our off-line GPS  And aside from all the above, we also look forward to making ourselves useful in the beautiful Newtown home of our ho...

Thirlmere Lakes NP - Campbelltown (ride) - Sydney (train) - Newtown 42km  [Take two. And by that I mean writing this post. After two hours of late night writing (the light went off after midnight) I wake up to the news that my creations have disappeared into digital nirvana. Technology is clearly not my strong point. So here we go again.] When we crawl out of the tent at Lake Couridjah in Thirlmere Lakes NP, I am overcome with a strong sense of anticipation. I have visions of us doing a fun selfie in front of the Opera House before riding into Newtown and being embraced by the long wished for reunion with our dearest friends Liz and Jackie. And the morning bliss surrounding our campsite is a stimulating backdrop to what's going on in my head and my heart. Morning bliss at a World Heritage site But anticipation alone doesn't get you anywhere, it is still a powerful emotion though. Full of beans, we go about our morning routine, enjoy a lakeside breakfast and in my head, I start ...