The hills have proven to be the biggest difference between what was the ‘Wilderness Coast’ in Victoria and what is now the ‘Sapphire Coast’ in New South Wales. In Victoria I didn’t listen to anyone warning of hills as they rarely pitched more than 5% (5ms vertical for every 100ms travelled). I can recall one big hill on the way from Apollo Bay to Port Campbell on the Great Ocean Road, it wasn’t too steep but it was about 10k long climbing 500ms vertical. This hill did earn me a pancake-stop at the top but in general I’d be almost over them before I really felt them. So when I was warned in Victoria of the hills on this part of the coast I just thought; ‘whatever’.
Well, they were right. Today has been my hardest ride in Australia just pipping my 150k ride through seven hours of rain to Cann River. That ride was longer than planned as I didn’t fancy camping in the rain at Cape Conran. Today’s ride, however, was simply a roller-coaster. The rolling hills around Blessington Lakes just don’t compare. I must have hit at least twenty up-hill sections of between 500ms and 2kms long. That’s hard enough but most of them were pitching at anything between 7 and 13 percent. The worst one took me up a wall that pitched to 17% at its steepest section (see photo). Tour of Flanders, eat your heart out! As I couldn’t find a topographical map of Australia in Borders every day is a surprise in terms of terrain. Today was a bit of a shock but it was also the most stunning scenery of the Australian trip so far. It would be a classic ride for my racing bike and it wasn’t at all busy at it took me along Tourist Routes 11, 9, 8 and 6 off the highway. The weather was compliant with blue skies and temperatures in the early thirties too. A stop for some incredible homemade ice-cream in Bermagui also yielded me some free smoked trout and prawns from the cheerful Californian who was selling fresh catch out the back of his van. It turns out that he used to do bike tours all over the world in 4 month blocks and so we got talking. He was in Singapore trying to decide whether he would ride through India or China only for his bike to go into ICU. While waiting for his bike to be repaired he met an Australian girl, forgot about his pending bike trip, moved to Australia and hasn’t been on a bike since.
The 17% wallAnyhow, what goes up must come down. I don’t work the descents preferring to coast instead. This is because the turning circle of a loaded bike isn’t the sharpest and also because my bike is about as aerodynamic as a truck ... what’s the point? However, now that the hills are steeper I have managed to eclipse my previous maximum speed coming down them. My new top speed for this bike is 71.4kph. The previous record of 61.5kph was unbelievably achieved on the flat Indian plains. I managed this as I took to riding the bumpers of trucks when the breeze was stiff and I had a lot of kilometres to cover. This is a skill that most bike-racers acquire riding back up to the bunch through the cavalcade following a puncture in a race. Naturally, I was selective about my trucks making sure that they were not overloaded, did not have rods that could shoot out the back and were not driven by kids. The rest was simple, when traffic was slowing through a town or approaching road-works you could get into the truck’s draft as it accelerated out of the town. They are so noisy that you hear every movement that the driver makes and so can anticipate everything. Of course, I would have a shorter stopping distance than a loaded truck and so there wasn’t much to worry about. In fact, I reckoned it was safer as all the risk when biking in India was in being overtaken by trucks when there wasn’t room to. A high tail made it easy to see the road in front and so it was up to me to enjoy the free ride. In one instance the guy kept accelerating and so I ran out of gears at 61.5kph. I couldn’t get over what I was seeing on my bike computer; I never would have thought it possible to whip a loaded mountain-bike up to such speeds on the flat. It made me laugh.
Take care
Marco