A Hilly Treat: Imintji to the Lennard River via the King Leopold Ranges
Within a few kilometres of Imintji we could see we had a climb ahead of us. I'd expected this.
What I hadn't expected was how beautiful and unusual the King Leopold Ranges are. It was an absolute treat cycling through them. An added bonus was that the section of road through here is sealed. Despite it being a climb, the road was easy to handle compared to the previous eight days.
Beyond the range, it was a fairly flat ride. We weren't sure where we'd find a camping spot with water but on the map Lennard River looked to be a possibility.
When we arrived there, it was evident that it was a major river with a good, unofficial camping area. Unfortunately the west bank with the easily accessed spots was fully occupied by 4 W-D based campers so we pushed around a flood damaged fence and then across a wide sandy bank to find a place to set up the tents on the east bank.
A bit of interest here was finding tracks of a freshwater croc in the mud. Later, after sunset, we were able to find the eye-shine of the crocs using a bright lamp. Eventually we spottted one swimming in the clear riverwater.
Our 9th day measured up as: 106 km 6 hrs 30 mins pedalling Average 16.4 km/hr Max 44.4 km/hr
John and Will toward the top of the first climb up the King Leopold Range section of the road.View after view unfolded every few hundred metres through the King Leopold Ranges.This is an ideal slow cycling area.
Geology on display in the King Leopold Range.That's Will hanging in there for a slow left hand curve and revelling in having a few kilometres of sealed road!
John's coffee maker was well used on this ride. As most cycle-tourers know, decent coffee takes priority over all other food. Forget carbs, fats, protein etc. Just go straight for the coffee.I learned in my basketball playing days from the dynamo Royals player Nick Crennan that "there is no such thing as too strong coffee; only weak people".John's mini-Trangia stove had an endearing feature of refusing to be extinguished by all conventional methods. An upturned bowl usually worked to smother the blaze.
The only snake I glimpsed on the entire ride. There were numerous tracks of snakes and other reptiles but this one was the only one I saw.It had a dark head and yellow-orange body and was about a metre long.
