WE HAVE LIFT OFF!

Day One Done and Dusted: Perth to Mandurah

If the capitals in the heading for today's post suggest I am excited about the fact we are underway, you'd be right. After all the preparations and our near disaster only four days before leaving for Perth it is a great relief - and joy - to actually be underway.  We were incredibly lucky to have an absolutely beautiful day for the start of this epic ride. Not only that, but Di's hip didn't trouble her at all on the bike. Anyway, to the detail ...

• we are one day into the ride, and less than 2% of the distance we should finish up travelling. The use of the phrase "should finish up travelling" is deliberate: Collis's distances for each days ride are definitely rubbery: we expected to ride 75 kilometres today and it was actually over 90! (It's a good thing Collis is such a jovial chap.)

Here is a photo of our group, taken just before we started off ...

A motley crew if ever there was one! Details about individual participants will be revealed individually and variously as we perambulate our way around the coast. For the moment I'll just point out Collis, the mastermind of the expedition. He is on the extreme left. Yes, the one with the inscrutable look. Perhaps he's wondering how we're all going to cope with things. Collis's partner in crime Kathy, who looks like being the dominatrix of our group, is not, unfortunately, in the photo. fYou'll see more of her later, but irst impressions suggest she is going to provide a good deal of colour to our trip.

Sheila's Ride

The first two days of our trip have been dubbed " Sheila's Ride". Sheila is the one second from the right in the photo above. That's her husband Norm on the extreme right. Norm is along for a couple of days as an extra high quality support crew member.

Sheila and Norm are from Bunbury, our destination for tomorrow. I'll tell you more about Sheila and why the first section is named in her honour shortly, but first here's a close-up of her, taken at the finish of today's ride ...

Now doesn't she look like she knows what's what, eh! Sheila turned 75 years old today. Being a canny local, she came into Mandurah via the short cut, and saved about 10 kilometres, but still clocked up over 80 kilometres. We have something like 110 kilometres to do tomorrow, and Sheila is going to share her local knowledge this time and lead us in for the last 10 kilometres or so.

Sheila isn't a lifelong cyclist, taking up the bike only about fifteen years or so ago when she decided she wanted to improve her health and get more out of life. Since then she's done a number of massive rides with Collis and Kathy. For example, she's already ridden from Perth to Melbourne. And from Broome to Perth. And from Adelaide to Darwin (that's against the wind, by the way). For various reasons Sheila doesn't feel quite up to  doing the whole trip to Melbourne this time around. Pity. It would have been great to hear some of her stories over the next couple of months.

Is This Europe?

During the few trips Di and I have had to Europe to do some of the great long distances hikes there, we've noticed that there are amazing, long bike paths for cyclists. I mentioned in the previous post how impressed I was with the network of bike paths around Perth. Well, today it turned out that we rode for a full 75 kilometres south from Perth along the Freeway Bike Path. While it was not very aesthetic riding right along the freeway, it certainly was safe. Today being Saturday, there were thousands of folks out on the route, some in quite large groups. 

The route was very flat (so probably unlike most of Europe apart from the Netherlands). I think we did only about 260 metres of ascent over the 90+ kilometres that we logged. But we did ride through some nice green farmland. Here's a short video of what it was like a good deal of the way ...

At one point I was surprised to see a small group of camels along the way, so I stopped to take a photo of them ...

And here's an image of our route ...

There was a bit of confusion about how we should get ourselves into Mandurah, so a couple of folks - who at this stage will remain nameless - took a wrong turn, which headed them back towards Perth! The rest of us waited patiently ...

... while Collis went back to pick them up.

Now  settled into our cozy group campsite ...

... it's time to go and rustle up some grub. I'm hungry!