24.79km / 1:46:13 / 182m / 17.0°C
Sandy. Very very sandy
After spending most of the day bushwalking around in the Canunda national park near Lake Bonney we’d driven to Southend to have a look round there. I decided to ride back to Millicent – eye-balling the map it seemed just over 20km, although 4WD tracks for half the distance. Nothing to impossible, as far as I could tell, and if it became too hard I could always retrace my route to Southend and circle around on the sealed roads
The first 3km were wonderful, lulling me into a false sense of security of smooth fast dirt roads, then all of a sudden I found they turned to deep sand. I’m used to 4WD tracks being rocky, or muddy, or rutted, all of which are variously rideable, the sand needs far fatter tyres than I had so I ended up scooting along with one foot out, or slithering side to side and falling over, or swallowing my pride and getting off and pushing the bike. Made for a low average speed, and had me debating turning around, but of course by the time I thought of that I’d already gone about 5-6km into it so the sunk-cost fallacy reared its ugly head. Some light hearted banter with a few guys in an off-road 4WD who came roaring up behind me “We’ve been seeing your tracks all over the place back here” … “Well I’ve only fallen off twice so far”. “She’s right mate, there’s only a few more miles of this” – and so there was, somewhere around Lake Frome the surface hardened back up and I could stay on the bike and keep my speed up in double figures! Then a bit of a corrugated farm road on towards Millicent and a final stretch of chasing daylight into town and I was finally back at the pub for a shower and a beer!
Few clouds, 16°C, Feels like 15°C, Humidity 59%, Wind 8m/s from S - by Klimat.app
My 1562nd day in a row riding a bike; the last 6 days of 2019, my and all of ‘21, ‘22, ‘23 and 2024 so far…
Garmin / Strava / ridewithgps