April 21, 2021
Tail winds at last
Melrose to Dutchman’s hut
The rain cleared by sunset and the morning sun on Mt Remarkable hinted at another beautiful day breaking for us. And that it was. After cooking up some bacon and eggs in the last decent kitchen were likely to see on this trip, we headed off in different directions. Pete and I jumped in the truck and headed 20ks north to Wilmington. We then rode the rail trail back to Melrose, primarily to have another coffee at Over the edge, and also to meet up with Steve.
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Steve spent the early morning riding the mountain bike tracks on his $10,000 bike. I was somewhat envious, but was under strict instructions not to entertain the thought of doing the same.
The cappuccino and scones were awesome, all validated by an old Italian bloke who effusively commended the barista, mentioned that he was himself a retired barista from Milan and had not had a better coffee in South Australia.
The rail trail was mildly interesting, but riding it both ways probably overkill. We made it back to Wilmington by mid morning. Not much happening in this town. There’s a Toy and Landrover museum and a 24 hour vending machine shop. Not sure if that means a shop that sells vending machines, or a shop with vending machines in it. I’m guessing the latter. Nothing else was open apart from Rusty Kates Feed Lot (‘more than great coffee’ the sign said). We passed on that one. The only other thing of note in Wilmington was observing 2 council works blower vaccing the dirt car park in front of the hall in preparation for Anzac Day. Apart from creating great palls of dust, I’m not sure they achieved a lot.
It was a beautiful days riding, particularly as we were riding through ‘The beautiful Valley’. Apart from Kates Feed Lot, every other business seemed to have beautiful valley in its name, like Beautiful Valley Caravan Park and Beautiful Valley Guns and Ammo.
Lunch was on a bluff overlooking the ever encroaching Flinders Ranges with Heysen like vistas abounding. I just love salad sandwiches. Apart from losing our way and backtracking 3ks we had some spectacular riding in the afternoon highlighted by climbing up and over Richman Gap and flying down a long rocky descent into Quorn.
With another 4 days riding to go Quorn was the last town to do a decent shop so we did exactly that. I went a bit crazy in the Quorn butchery, not only buying the requisite bacon and steak, but I lashed out on frozen Morton Bay Bugs as a surprise entree for tomorrow night when we’re camping at Kankanya ruins.
Pete’s camper has a 100 litre water tank underneath it. The bracket holding it managed to break just out of Quorn, and he ended up at a motor mechanic to remove the whole thing as it wasn’t immediately repairable. We followed the trail of water which led us to him.
The last 10ks to Dutchman’s Hut in the Dutchman’s Stern National Park was a long slow drag uphill, initially on a sealed road and gradually dropping away to a stony track. By the time we got there the sun was setting and we were pretty tired but we still had a few hurdles to overcome. The supposedly free accommodation for walkers and riders had a lock on it and a sign saying that bookings needed to be made through Parks SA. No problems except that we had no phone reception. So we ended up hiking up a nearby hill/mountain to scrounge 2 bars courtesy of Optus, enough to get the combination of the key lock from the friendly park ranger. It was not til several hours later we remembered that we hired satellite phones!
2 red wines and a Thai green chicken curry and all was good with the world.
Today's ride: 91 km (57 miles)
Total: 656 km (407 miles)
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