Day 22 - Dusty Roads

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Cootamundra - Binalong 91km (via the backroads)

While I patiently wait for our coffee order to be prepared, I admire the beautiful black and white photographs of local 'dusty roads' at Dusty Road Coffee Roasters. I comment to the very friendly Barista, that we might be riding some of these roads today. She just smiles, leaving me with plenty of room for interpretation. 

Fast forward 91kms, 7.5 hours of riding time and quite a few dusty roads poorer/richer, I am thankful to her, that she didn't say anything. It was epic. Something Bushy, a true  blue local and town ambassador, must have recognised when we pulled up in front of the Binalong Hotel, our destination for the night. He immediately offered a kind welcome, acknowledged our achievement and took a happy snap (not sponsored by Carlton by the way). I have never seen Louise downing half a litre of beer faster than today.


Binalong Hotel - happy to be here.

To pack everything into today's post could have the potential to end up like "War & Peace". But the title could serve as a metaphor for our riding experience. 

War was the wind... unforgivingly pushing against us for most of the day, sometimes at 35km/h, we had to pedal downhill not to fall over! Peace was the early morning breakfast in Cootamundra, in the form of an apple crumble muffin and a vanilla slice(!), the delicious coffee from said coffee roaster and definitely including the friendliest people one could ever meet at 7:30am in any town. Everyone shared a cheerful comment, a good wish or a funny joke. Maybe it's the special angle parking that keeps everyone so happy in this town? Everywhere you look, cars are reverse parked, in a 60° angle, it's weirdly adorable. 

Louise's excellent Google mapping skills came to full shine today. The Burley Griffin Way (B94) and the Olympic Highway (A41) are battle zones to be avoided. The much more peaceful options meant dusty roads and a constant up and down. But with the railway line often in sight, we knew were kind of heading into the right direction.

Over...

...and under the railway.

The next conflicting element came in form of a blood nose and for the first time the first aid kit for people (and not for bikes) was pulled out. Louise stuck some kind of wool (haemostat) up my nose. It worked at treat. Goodness forbid for the scenario to be the other way around... Definitely at peace we are with the sunshine. Rain clouds were passing us right, left and centre. Rain to cool us (or the wind) down remained wishful thinking. But with what is happening up north from here, we need to be grateful for every day we arrive dry and dusty.

The twin towns of Murrumburrah and Harden hosted our lunch break. And more than lunch, we needed to digest the fact that we still had 40km of quite likely very dusty roads ahead of us. The worst was yet to come and thank goodness we didn't know it. The statistic of 'hills we couldn't ride' received a few more additions and so did our swearing vocabulary (in English and in German). With the wool still stuck up my nose my respiratory system was impacted enough when the scenery turned breathtaking:



More dusty road ahead.

A peaceful ending was definitely reached when our welcoming host and chef at the Binalong Hotel asked: would you like 2 or 3 lamb chops for dinner? Given that today concludes the third week on the road, we went for 3. But stuck with two beers, just so we didn't fall over.

Location: Binalong NSW 2584, Australia

Comments

  1. FrancieMarch 2, 2022 at 4:56 PM

    Wow the photos are spectacular. Good move, keeping away from the highways. Humid here.
    Yum, lamb chops. Pub meals are great Unbelievable what is happening up north and now floods are down to Ballina. Have friends who are leaving tomorrow for a six week house / dog sit in the Gold Coast. They are driving up but I am not sure they will make it. Little Harry has Covid (as of today) but really hoping he won't be sick for long. Good luck with the dusty roads

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