April 1, 2024
Mendooran
We were on the road as the sun was rising, which in these last days of daylight saving was just before seven thirty.
Graham had warned us off the Newell Highway, the national road between Melbourne and Brisbane, and his warning was backed up by other journals. However we needed to negotiate the first eight kilometers out of Dubbo on it. We could have turned off onto a more circuitous route after just three but the highway was quiet at that time of the morning and there were very few trucks on the road, so we rode our luck. It is very narrow and, given the amount of road freight it reportedly carries, is a route best avoided by cyclists.
Once on the road to Mendooran it was a long slog into a headwind. The road was straight and gently undulating. The temperature rose from its morning minimum of twenty degrees to reach into the thirties. The scenery was an unchanging parade of Ironbark trees. And there was a steady stream of traffic.
When Vince McCarthy road this route he noted that there was about ten vehicles per hour. To test his postulation and to relieve my boredom, I started counting vehicles. I took three fifteen minute samples, starting from a randomly chosen future start time. In two of them I counted twenty one vehicles, ignoring motorcycles. The other had twenty vehicles. This suggested we had more than eighty vehicles per hour. I'm guessing the increase was because of the Easter Weekend because many of the passing vehicles were towing caravans or boats.
After we had stopped for lunch around midday, the traffic got lighter although I wasn't in the mood to count by that stage.
Sone time before three we pulled into Mendooran. We first checked out the large free camping area near the river. There were quite a few caravans and campervans already parked there. There are toilets and cold showers, basic but certainly a lot better than sone for which we have paid in other parts of the world.
While looking around we were approached by a woman cyclist staying at the hotel. She told us that the hotel in Ballimore is no longer open, so it was possibly best that we had been forced to go through Dubbo. She also said that the free camping at the hotel looked good. So we cycled over to the Royal Hotel to check it out.
Hot showers and a grassy place to pitch the tent swayed our decision and we setup camp behind the hotel.
We plan to head to Binnaway tomorrow. Rain is predicted so it looks like we'll be packing a wet tent and wearing our rain gear. The flip side is that the temperature will drop to a more comfortable range in the mid twenties.
Today's ride: 73 km (45 miles)
Total: 1,054 km (655 miles)
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