Grumpy Old Men On Bikes

We made it.  We are safely in Perth with 2144 miles on the clock, the fat lady has sung beautifully and we know exactly how many chickens we have. To paraphrase Kennedy's 'Apollo Programme' speach, we chose this trip 'not because it was easy, but because it was hard'.  It WAS hard but we have been very lucky.  Had we had more headwinds and/or very hot days it would have been much much harder and I wonder if we would have made it. Australia truly is a big country.  Across two expeditions we have followed the coast from Brisbane to Perth, but we are still considerably  less than half way round.  The obvious next leg is from Perth to Darwin but that needs quite a lot of research.......the north is even hotter and the gaps between places even bigger. Just to wrap up the fine details: Last night we went to the local pub where it was still 1975.  The key 'attraction' was a couple of barmaids wearing very little but dental floss.  I am...

Neil returned at about 2am, long after I had retired.  This morning he refused to talk about where he had been but I caught him furtively stuffing a pink mankini and signed Village People photo into his panniers.   Still, what happens on tour stays on tour! Today was another long one - 97 by the time we were in our cabin.  The first 20 were lovely, on quiet shady roads with kangaroos hopping along beside us. ..... which reminds me, why wasn't Skippy called Hoppy? Then we joined Highway 1, which is back to being a roaring dual carriageway, where we ground along on the hard shoulder for 50+ miles.  My arse continues to give me occasional grief and even Neil seemed to be having problems today for some reason ;-) We are now in Mandurah, a large coastal resort with same pretty pricey oceanfront properties.  Tomorrow we have less than 60 miles to Perth but the show isn't over until the fat lady sings.

We has an excellent BBQ last night and even found some proper British sausages (sausages need to be added to flies and beer on Australia's list of bad points).  We ate far too much and possibly had 1 beer more than was strictly necessary but it was a nice evening. We went to bed somewhat trepidatious because, to be frank, our hot hilly day had left us more than a little buggered.  Today turned out to be OK; still 74 miles and still hilly but it was cool for most of the morning and the hills were a little less relentless. Two things to record about our ride: 1/  we passed a sign warning us of smoke and soon found ourselves cycling through the remains of a forest fire.  It was very weird - completely quiet and still but with the odd plume of smoke from a smouldering stump.  I doubt the picture properly captured the scene. 2/ we also passed a girl standing beside a car that looked like it had just mown down a herd of cows.  A few hundred fe...

Australian road surfaces are excellent and even roads that would rate as 'good' in the UK are being resurfaced.  This is all very well but last night we stayed in the same motel that the road crews use.  Road crews get up VERY early and make lots of noise, including firing up clattery diesel engines and letting them idle for an hour or two.  Bastards. So, we were up and out by 7 despite plans to the contrary.  This prooved to be no bad thing because our day turned out to be hotter and hillier than we could possibly have imagined.  We climbed 5200 feet and the temperature peaked at 37.2.  If you would like to know what this is like......set up an exercise bike in front of an open fan oven, set the bike to maximum resistance and the oven to maximum temperature.  Pedal for 7 hours.  Enjoy. Having said nice things about the road train drivers earlier in the trip we wish to retract them.  We are now being run off the road on a d...

Cycling long distances across the flat wilderness is excellent training......for cycling long distances on the flat.  Unfortunately we are now in quite hilly country and all that training is counting for little.  Today was up and down like a stripper's knickers and the miles came hard - 76 of them for anyone who gives a rat's.   Road conditions have changed, with quite a lot of traffic (mainly camper vans and cars pulling caravans) but still the odd road-train to keep us on our toes.  As soon as we see one approaching in the mirror we check ahead for oncoming traffic.  If there is none we just brace for the blast of air as it pulls around us; if something IS coming we get off the road as fast as possible and cower in the ditch.   The roadkill 'Big Three' has now changed and cyclists are top targets :-(. We have been paralleling the coast and  are now in Walpole (population 460).  Tomorrow we turn north for the last pus...

I expect that you are all worried sick after yesterday's lack of a blog.  It's OK, relax, I just couldn't be arsed.  Well, to be more accurate, it was a fairly hard and hilly day and I was a great big grumpy old hector. We were in Jerramungup (can anyone explain why almost everywhere ends in an 'up?) which is completely closed on a Sunday.  We ended up getting food from the gas station and having an early night. Today was our last biggie, with 110 lumpy miles to Albany.  We did them in some style and arrived by 3pm.  Albany is HUUUUGE.  It has a population of over 30,000 and is the 6th largest community in the stat e.  We are completely bewildered.  If you look at a map we are down in the very bottom left-hand corner, back on the coast. The landscape has changed considerably with scrub being replaced by farmland and things are surprisingly green given that it is late summer.  We have seen parakeets of almost every colour to...

As I said, Ravensthorpe is a mining town (nickel, cadmium and copper).  This means that it is competitively bustling considering its small size and general lack of amenities.  Everyone here wears the Ozzie national costume: shorts, light tan work boots and a hi-vis shirt.   Beards appear to be mandatory and even the women seem to have received the memo. Last night was Friday and we went to the local pub for dinner.  It was rammed with miners spending their wages......wall to wall hi-vis.  Today it is saturday and we presume the mine is closed as there isn't a sole around.  Our  decision to do a double day has been vindicated by the massive westerly that is blowing - it really wouldn't have been fun (though yesterday's 115 was hardly a laugh a minute either!). By midday we had exhausted the possibilities for chores, having washed clothes, fiddled with bikes and shopped.  While fiddling with bikes a small but precious tool wen...

Yesterday was our rest day.....tomorrow is our rest day.  Makes no sense does it? Actually it does.  The winds have finally turned against us and we are facing a run of westerlies, but tomorrow it is forecast to be wet with very strong winds in our face.  So what we have done is ride today's AND tomorrow's miles in one go, meaning that tomorrow we can stay in bed and ignore the crap weather. This was our 5th century and 4th over 110 miles.  You are probably thinking 'jeez, those boys are incredible' and I'm not going to argue with you.  We did a lumpy 117 miles with a fair headwind for most of it.....it was hard.   Still, we are now holed up in Ravensthorpe ( a gritty little mining town) with the prospect of a day quietly reflecting on what fantastic cyclists we are. 

For some reason it seems that Facebook has decided that my posts should only be revealed to Neil's side of the family if he goes in and approves them.  Since this requires levels of computer literacy that he can only dream about, many of you may not have seen 'six pack' until today.  Sorry about that. Having been on the road for 18 days and done well over 1400 miles we were very much due a rest day.  We rose late and had a lazy breakfast of bacon sandwiches, mooched round the shops, had a coffee.......and thought 'oh bugger it, let's go for a ride'. There is a 40km scenic loop that takes in a stunning (but hilly) stretch of coast which filled a chunk of afternoon.  The fact that it goes past an excellent micro-brewery that opens for tastings on Thursday afternoons is completely co-incidental.  They do some wonderful beers but we worry that Australia may not be ready for beer that doesn't taste like it has passed through a horse. Tomorrow we a...

Well, the Salmon Gums hotel eventually opened in a half-hearted, wish I wasn't running a pub, sort of way.  The owners are desperately trying to sell the place and couldn't be less cut-out running a pub if they tried.  'What time is dinner please my good lady?'........'dunno mate, depends when my bloke gets back from Esperance!'. Our dining companions were an interesting lot: A brummie who has been bumming around on a bike for 5 months.  As well as being monumentally full of shit he entertained the bar by ordering his meal then, without a word,  opening up a complex medical apparatus and injecting himself with something or other. A pair of £10 poms who emigrated there in the 70's.  She was born in Brentwood (my home town). An Ozzie who was spectacularly inebriated.  The only words we could understand were the very worst profanities but, in one of his rare slightly lucid moments, I think he was explaining that rugby players are f@#$in...

Last night's pizzas lived up to our high hopes and they were so substantial that we even saved a bit for today's lunch. We are now half way to Esperance in a little nowhere place called Salmon Gums.  The only real difference from the Nullarbor is that the wilderness is now interspersed with tiny communities rather than roadhouses.  We have still ridden through absolutely nothing for 61 miles. We are enjoying Australia but it is time to face the elephant in the room.  The flies are driving us crazy.  Any time we stop at the roadside we are immediatey engulfed by flies of a particularly nimble, cunning and tenacious variety. They are too fast to swat and waving arms about gives only momentary relief.  This, however, is only the start of the problem.  When we set off a gain, a little community of flies comes with us.  They live on our backs where the air is calmer, from where they launch raids to crawlnim our ears or lay eggs on our eyeba...

(Adam and The Ants) The sheep station was great.  We slept in the shearers accommodation and all dined together at long tables, as I imagine the farm hands would have done during shearing time.  We had excellent roast lamb and bread & butter pudding, all washed down with the cheapest Merlot on the Nullarbor.  Neil even blagged leftover pud for today's lunch. I know of people who have come to Oz for a 'swimming with dolphins' experience but last night I beat that with my 'peeing with kangeroos'.  I got up for a pee to find two ruddy great 'roos right outside our door.  They shuffled over a bit to give me room and watched me water the shrubs. I took the opportunity to give them a bit of advice about how to cross the road safely. 65 miles later and we are in Norseman.  There is no clearly defined start or end to the Nullarbor but Norseman is generally regarded as the western gateway so we have made it!!!  The town has road jun...

Don't worry girls, we haven't had an accident! Firstly, Skylab.  I returned to the exhibit yesterday evening and gave it a  closer inspection.  It is a fairly badly made fake.....unless NASA used pop rivets in the construction of space stations.  To be fair, nowhere do they actually claim it is genuine but it is right next to all the press clippings about parts of Skylab falling in the immediate area.  They DO have a genuine piece which very closely resembles the shoe-box size lump of molten metal that I had been expecting. The roadhouse was asking a very lumpy $155 for a motel room but offered us 'backpacker' accommodation for $95.  We took it and quickly discovered it was a basically a sectioned up shipping container.  The  beds were surprisingly clean and comfortable but it wasn't exactly the Ritz. Today we added a Daewoo Matitz to our roadkill zoo.  It had obviously been on the losing end of an encounter with a kan...

With virtually an entire day to kill in Caiguna there was a lot of lazing around.  Prices in the roadhouses are so eye-watering that hitting the bar early would be fiscal suicide, so we sipped our lemonade and generally wasted time. Neil asked me if I fancied playing around, which caused some consternation until realised he meant 'play a round'.  He was determined to play the local golf hole and assured me that he had some experience as a golfist and had once had his own rods and everything. Well.....to put it diplomatically, this turned out to be complete  bollocks.  I insisted he scored properly, so air shots and moving the ball out of bushes were all counted and be ended up with 15 on a par 4.  Neil will argue that he had been given a left-handed putter but, since it took 13 to reach the green, this is a pretty weak defence. Eventually, at 5pm, we cracked.  Neil sold his body behind the generator shed and I put my remaining kidn...

Today is something of a slow news day but I have good internet connectivity so here are a few photos from the last few days. Last night we had dinner with Peter, a Swiss cyclist.  He is doing much shorter days than us so we sneered but obviously there wasn't any point mentioning wars.  This morning we met an American cyclist.  He is doing much shorter days than us.............you get the idea. Today we have done a feeble 40 miles and are holed up in Caiguna at 11:15 waiting for check-in to open.  Later we are going to borrow golf bats and play the local hole.

I Drove All Night Apologies to those who set their alarms early to read the next thrilling and hilarious instalmemt of our adventure but we have been a bit busy while you have been sleeping. I would like my headstone to include the inscription 'Here lies Steve; he once rode 129.6 miles with panniers'.  The stonemason can get started now because I have no intention of ever improving on today! We had another tailwind but this time is was little more than a gentle breeze so there was plenty of peddling to do, and the sun put on it's very largest hat.  We got up to 37.6  degrees Centigrade (chuffing hot for those of you more familiar with Fahrenheit) I'm not going to beat about the bush....I am drinking cold beer. Straight Down The Middle Over the last few days I have seen multiple signs appearing to indicate golf courses.  'Surely not' I thought,  'there aren't enough people for one course never mind several.  And anyway......it...

Strength, stamina and dogged determination - that is what it takes to read this blog!  If you have stuck with us this far you really are made of the right stuff, but might want to re-evaluate how you are spending your life. We are in the middle......not quite of the trip but of the Nullabor.  There is approximately the same amount of bugger all ahead of us as there is behind us. After our day of magnificence yesterday, today was more or less a rest day with just 48 miles to do.  We were up at something o'clock (we never did sort the time difference out) and were soon through the quarantine checks and into Western Australia.  For some reason they seemed particularly concerned about international honey smugglers but once we assured them we were honey free they waved us through.  While they were checking us I think I saw some bees fly past and I could swear they were sniggering. The 'tree de jour' was Cups and we still have tomorrow's shoe tree ...

Say a Little Prayer About a week ago Neil chatted up a little old lady outside a shop.....nothing new there!  Having heard about our adventure, Maureen took our names and promised to pray for us.  We were starting to think her prayers had fallen on deaf ears but today The Man in charge of the weather dished up a stonking tailwind.  We did our 115 miles at an average of 18.5mph!!!  This would be a pretty impressive result on a Sunday club ride, but with 40 plus lbs of crap strapped to the back it is astonishing.  I wish I could claim some of the credit but that big old wind just pushed and pushed.  It was also flatter than the flattest flat thing you ever saw - we climbed fewer than 900 feet. I Never Talk to Stangers Today we met a lone guy heading east.  He is doing shorter days than us so we sneered, but didn't mention the war because he was English.  He was riding a mountain bike and wild camping and looked like he could...

Today we met 4 lads from Argentina coming the other way.  They are doing much shorter days than us, so we sneered and mentioned the Falklands.   The silly sods are taking a year to cycle round the whole of Australia, which makes what we are doing sound positively sane. There can be no doubting that we are now truely on the Nullarbor Plain because the views go on forever (though there is diddly squat to see).  We did a modest 90 miles, mostly with a slight tailwind, and are now in the next roadhouse - a much smarter affair with a restaurant and bar.  If we can find anyone to buy one of our kidneys we may be able to scrape together enough money for a modest supper.  When your nearest competitors are 90 miles east or 115 miles west there is no great pressure to keep prices keen!  If not I suppose it will be ants and biscuits again. We continue to add wombats, kangaroos and rabbits to our zoo but today we introduced some sort of grey ow...

Last night we gorged on roast chicken from the supermarket then settled down to watch the 1969 version of the Italian Job.  Michael Caine really is a remarkable actor....he does 'wooden' better than anyone! At dawn we saddled up and headed out into the nullarbor.  For the first 45 miles little changed, but then we came to a roadhouse and store which had a sign telling us it was the last shop for 1000km.  That was a bit of a wake-up call! Over the remaining 50 miles (it was a 95 mile day) the landscape has become bleaker and the flies have become a ruddy nuisance.  There is a big incentive to pedal fast as, below about 15mph, you invest more effort in swatting flies than propelling the bike. We are staying in the Nundroo roadhouse - a gas station on a dusty lot beside the road with  a few basic motel rooms out back.  The room itself isn't bad but otherwise the whole place has the feel of being on its last legs. It was a good day for...

It wasn't a bad view from our cabin door when we rose this morning.  We were up a little later than usual, having had to digest half a cow and rather more ice cream than is medically recommended, but we were still on the road by 8:15.  Our route continues to follow the coast and, having done Streaky Bay, we decided to do the bacon double and diverted off to Smokey Bay for lunch.  Despite doing 74 miles we were in our cabin by 13:30.  The cabin was booked on the internet and cost a paltry £37.00......when we arrived we found out why.  Apparently we have been 'upgraded' but it requires considerable imagination to imagine how crappy the one we booked might have been. We are back on Highway 1,  in Ceduna - gateway to the Nullarbor.  Probably, like us prior to our trip planning, you don't know much about the Nullarbor (literally 'no tree').  It is basically 750 miles of flat, featureless wilderness containing no towns and crossed by Hi...