August 22, 2024
Cycle day 90 - Jamestown to Burra
Cycle day 90 - Jamestown to Burra = 79km. 7227km cycle toured on this trip so far.
Burra Caravan Park = $20 unpowered.
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It was a rainy night last night. Some of the rain sounded quite heavy on the tent but when we checked how much rain fell on Elders it was on 3mm. Maybe it was just short and lots of rain at once. It was a cool clear morning when we got out of bed - I think around 6 degrees but Neil said Elders said it was 9 degrees. Nah it was definitely colder than 9 degrees. We packed up a wet tent and were on the road at 7.15am. Nice and early. Light winds today coming in a north west direction again.
It is 34km to Spalding and the road is another minor one. They are doing roadworks but that wasn't until closer to Spalding but they have widened our side of the road by putting in a shoulder but since the traffic was light we rode on the road as it was smoother. It felt like we were gently going down hill all the way to Spalding.
The surrounding area looks very green and lush but not sure on the canola crop - they are really short stumpy plants about 15cm tall and have flower heads on them. There was one field that we thought was ok and it is just beginning to flower. I think it might be late here as I expected to come through here with flowering canola like in NSW.
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We come to Spalding and have an early cuppa and then back on the road this time it is the Goyder Highway to Burra 43km away. It is a gentle climb out of Spalding for about 12km. You could feel and see the slight climbs as you wind your way through the hills. We did manage to see the old viaduct that is now in someones property.
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How fabulous is the outlook for this house at the top of one of its hills. Stunning!
The Morgan-Whyalla water pipeline is also following us up this hill and just at the top it veers off and heads towards west.
Not sure why there are 2, maybe 1 is the old one and no longer used.
At the top of the hill there is no downhill but you go along for a while and at the Booborowie turnoff which is about 19km from Burra you again start climbing this time the hill is about 7km long and is no so gradual but not as bad as Horrocks Pass. We could do it sitting on about 12km per hour in our lower gears.
We have lost our shoulder since the Booborowie turnoff but the traffic is light still except for 1 truck that we could hear behind us and it is going just a bit faster than us up the hill but it was going very slow but eventually it passed us then turned off near the top of the hill.
At the top of this hill it is just a gentle down hill to the Barrier Highway which is a major highway that goes to Broken Hill and OMG what a miserable 9km we had to ride. Heaps of traffic so we constantly had to get off and it had absolutely no shoulder just a 10cm drop of the road! So glad we aren't going to Broken Hill!
Burra town is 2km off this highway and it is a nice old town, with heaps of historical old stone buildings. We have been here before and we find out the caravan park is booked out fully tomorrow so lucky we are only here for 1 night!
Tomorrow the wind changes to a north east and our road to Morgan is in a south east direction (but more east than south) so that means a strong cross wind that we don't really want to do as it is near a 85km ride so we are taking advantage of the northerly and going south to Kapunda - last time I was at Kapunda was when I cycled Darwin to Adelaide (pre Neil). I am not sure I have been here with Neil.
Today's ride: 79 km (49 miles)
Total: 7,227 km (4,488 miles)
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