Nice to finally meet you Sydney

I arrived into Sydney on Friday as originally planned to conclude the Australian leg of my bike-tour from Melbourne. I hugged every inch of coast where possible to accumulate 1,365k of loaded touring over 12 bike days. This figure does not include any unloaded exploring I may do along the way. I have ridden a total of 3,515 loaded kilometres so far. The last 3,215 of which were in a pair of flip flops I bought for five bucks ... but hey, who's counting? 

The NSW coast from Eden to Sydney has some spectacular beaches. I arrived into the beautiful town of Huskisson on Monday and just had to spend more time there. Jervis Bay on which its sits has some of the whitest sandy beaches in the world and is a place where one could spend the whole summer fishing, snorkeling, exploring the beaches, hiking the national park, boating the lake, dolphin watching etc etc. It was my favourite place of the whole ride and so I spent two full days off checking it out. The penultimate day took me past Seven Mile Beach where I managed to ride through 48 degrees of heat coming through Nowra, The consequence of such heat was thunderstorms on the ride into Sydney. It was a very damp and rainy day but I managed to ride over the sea-cliff bridge and through the Royal National Park before navigating the least bike-friendly city I have ever come across. The local cyclists know their way around but cyclists tend to ride in packs for safety. There is just no space on the road for motorists to share with cyclists as they have crammed three lanes where we would have two. The rainy day made for more cars on the road and riding the pavements doesn't really work either as they are barely two foot wide in places and disappear onto the opposite side of road also. I was aware that Sydney has issues for cyclists so it was interesting to experience them first-hand even if it didn't create a positive first impression.

Within 24 hours of arriving I had ridden through the Royal National Park, had pints at the Opera Bar, had traveled over the Harbour Bridge and had chilled out on Bondi Beach. In addition my friends Eoin and Eilish showed me several cool places where the views of the harbour have been stunning. People I met on the way up all told me how pretty Sydney is; I can confirm that the women are incredible.

Chat soon

Marco