Gobsmackingly Good Cycling: Gawler to Wellington

In Which We Are Wooed by Wine Country

Before I forget, I just wanted to share a photo I took of some tree bases near the river in Gawler when Di and I had a stroll on our rest day. If you are ever passing through Gawler and happen to decide to spend a day hanging or more in the area, you could do worse than have a stroll through the park alongside the river. Anyway, here's the photo ...

Trees in Gawler

You could also do worse than have a meal at the PA Hotel in Mrs Fairweather's Eatery, where we had lunch. Scrumptious!

Okay. To the business of the day. It was nice to meet Jen and Neil yesterday evening. Di and I were hoping that we'd all set off together, but Jim was still packing up his tent and Di was getting cold standing around so we decided to set off at a leisurely pace so they could catch up. (As it turned out, they didn't catch us until we got to Williamstown where we had arranged to stop at a nice little café. The reason? Neil had the bad luck to get a flat virtually straight out of the caravan park.)

We went down the road about 500 metres and then it was straight into a stretch of climbing. And we climbed steadily for quite a while, which was a nice change after so much flat pedalling. As we idled along expecting the others to catch up I shot this little video of Di ...

And then some shots of vineyards, including these two with sheep roaming around amidst the vines ...

Sheep in vines

Sheep in vines close up

One of the prettiest vineyards we passed by was this one with the rolling hills in the background  ...

Attractive wine estate

At one point I stopped to take a photo of two houses, one on either side of the road. There was the old place ...

Home no more

... and the place directly across the road ...

The new house looks just a little more comfortable

Di kept making me stop and take photos because we have some friends who are reading the blog and will be travelling to this part of the country soon. Here's a photo of a horse grazing and vines in the background ...

Bucolic bliss

The grey stillness brought to mind a few lines from Shakespeare. 

Passing yet another vineyard I noticed that an old windmill had been rendered useless by a tree or two growing around it ...

Paper covers scissors; Tree eats windmill

As explained earlier, despite our sedate pace of less than 20 kilometres per hour, Di and I reached Williamstown without being caught by the others. The riding up to this point was just gorgeous, despite some the drivers in Gawler being less than cycle friendly. (I'd go so far as to say that they were worse as a group than anywhere else we've ridden so far on this big tour. Thankfully things improved just about as soon as we left the city limits.) We found the Bar 41 Artisan Café - you can't miss it - and settled in with a coffee and  some very special doughnuts. In contrast to meeting some of the worst drivers we've seen on our trip, we thought this little café had the best coffee we'd consumed since leaving home. Better even by far than anything we'd had in Perth. They were displaying today's brew so I took a photo of what they were serving ...

Superb Coffee!

The other four riders soon arrived, followed by Collis and Kathy. We had a very pleasant sojourn in this great little eatery before the six of us rode off together.

Crossing the Adelaide Hills

Despite being quite a way from Adelaide, this region is still part of the geographic area known as the Adelaide Hills and there are some good climbs, many of which are used for the Tour Downunder. Just about straight out of Williamstown we were greeted with this sign ...

Cycle friendly sign

... which would have just been a nice little warm-up for the pro peloton.

Our next scheduled stop was at a small settlement called Palmer. Collis was very concerned that we not go toward Birdwood as he'd had a cyclist go that way on a previous trip, ending up way, way off course. There were several intersections where we could have gone the wrong way but, with Collis's mantra playing in my head I made sure we didn't deviate and stopped to shoot this short little video so he would know we'd been paying attention ...

Collis  had also said to go towards Mount Pleasant but not into it. But Dianne and I, being from Tasmania I guess, had got a little way ahead of the others and decided to take a detour so we could have a quick look at the town. I took a few photos, including one of the Soldiers Memorial Hall ...

Mt Pleasant Soldiers Memorial Hall

... and this gem with an old bloke sitting outside the post office with his dog in his lap ...

Mt Pleasant Post Office

We had a short but cheery chat, the old bloke and I, then I got back on the bike to catch up with Di. She was waiting by this old buggy at the southern end of town ...

Too big to tow on a bike!

Just ahead I noticed Kathy's car turn towards Tungkillo, which was the way we needed to go. I rightly assumed that our little detour had served the other purpose I had in mind, which was to put us at the back of the group for a while. 

Despite the skies being a little threatening, up to this point no rain had fallen except when we'd stopped at Williamstown for a coffee. We pedalled on and had just about caught up to the other riders when we got to Tungkillo and its old pub ...

Tungkillow Hotel

 The main reason I'd stopped however was that I couldn't resist taking this photo ...

Tungkillo earthworm?!?

For some reason, this image brought to mind H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds (not the movie, the original printed version, and the radio broadcast made of it).

Suddenly - and almost surprisingly - while Di and I were stopped it actually did start raining. We quickly donned our rain jackets and got back on the bike. Almost immediately we found ourselves climbing again - and catching the others. Seeing that the rain had stopped as suddenly as it started, Di stopped to take her rain jacket off but I had a head of steam up and kept going, passing the others about halfway up the hill. I tried to get photos of Jim and Jen and then Neil as they went past but fluffed both shots. While I waited for Di I did manage to shoot a video of the barren tops. You will see Jacquei, who had paused lower down to shoot the others passing, stream by ...

What I didn't realise was that we were about to set off down an exhilarating descent into Palmer. With the wind at our backs we descended about 150 metres in just on 4 kilometres. This Google Earth image, which I hastily (and a bit inaccurately) traced shows the rough detail ...

Palmer descent

Despite the not-so steep slope and relatively short run-in, I did manage to almost hit 72 kilometres per hour before town ...

Going like the clappers!

We had lunch ...

Palmer lunch stop

... out in front of the general store, which had lots of neat stuff, including this classic old pram ...

With a little spit and polish ...

Onwards, ever onwards

Lunch done and dusted we pressed on. That tail wind I mentioned earlier had strengthened enough to push us up the long but gradual rise out of town. Di and I found it hard to resist the winds seductive whisper and insistent push, push, push and soon found ourselves out in front again.  The sun had come out and it was just glorious riding. I sat up and shot this video as we were rolling along ...

On and on we went, with Collis and Kathy passing us just before we got in to Murray Bridge for another rendezvous. Jacquei had also found the push of the tailwind impossible to resist and rolled in shortly afterwards, followed by Jim, Neil and Jen. The 34 kilometres from Murray Bridge to Wellington was largely with the continued assistance of that persistent tailwind, apart from a seven kilometre section where the road actually had the audacity to take us around into the wind, before coming to its senses with about three kilometres left to our destination.

Here's the map of our journey ...

Gawler to Wellington

As you can see, we've bypassed Adelaide. We'll be on the seashore again tomorrow. It seems now that we are hastening towards the end of our journey. We've had 33 days of riding, covered over 3750 kilometres and there is only 10 riding left and less than a thousand to go. Were I not in such an uncomfortable position, propped up in the tent as I compose this post, I'd try to wax lyrical about all that, but I think I better just pull the pin there, except to say that I don't think Jen and Neil fully realise how lucky they've been to start their journey from Gawler to Melbourne with such a sublime day of riding. Rolling hills, wine estates, a great coffee shop, a wonderful descent, no real  rain to speak of, a super helpful tailwind and a finish in sunshine and grass to camp on. Just brilliant. One of the best days of the trip so far.

P.S. The new gear lever is working just as it should. How good was it to  have all my gears back after my ride into Gawler the other day. I've also dressed up the bike a bit, and will post a picture further down the track.