158.25km / 9:54:21 / 2399m / 26.0°C

Stunning countryside, but way too far and too much up. A day of reptiles; a goanna ran past in the paddock, had to avoid a long brown snake crossing, blue-tongue roadkill, and a dragon tried to scare me off with a big hiss display. Wee Jasper is wonderful, but sadly, was still a long way from my destination

I got away nice and early after muesli in the pub accommodation, out of Tumut and off up the valley. There were even signs pointing to “Wee Jasper” and “Canberra” – although there’s two routes to Canberra, the shorter is straight east, through the mountains and I was a bit wary of it, unsure if there’d be any chance of getting water or food. The longer route promised to be another 160km day – or a fraction under – and also went up and over the Brindabellas, north-east to Wee Jasper and then down a road I’d never heard of to come into Canberra from the south-west. It was hot, it was hard work, it was a mix of farmland, bushland, and monoculture pine plantations. It was well outside my comfort zone

Log trucks and gravel trucks up in the forests on the dirt roads too, although every one of them passed as wide as possible, and I did my best to get off the tracks well in advance especially on some of the narrow sections

Lunch at Wee Jasper felt like the end of a long day, except there’s a big climb up out the village and still the rest of the way to go. Luckily too, there was lunch at Wee Jasper as a cafe was open and I didn’t have to survive on the food I had with me – although stupidly I managed to leave the cafe and get 200m down the road before realising I’d left my backpack sitting by the table!

Then serious misgivings and doubts as to whether I could get through to Canberra, the “Back Creek Road” was a complete unknown, but shorter than going up to Yass and down the Barton Highway. On the other hand, the chances of begging a lift would be far higher once I got to the highway … anyway, once I got to the Back Creek Road turnoff I saw it had a very shiny new sign labelled “Canberra” and it looked promising, so off I went …

The last few hours were slow and tiring, with a few too many hills walked. Definitely was a relief to see the Telecom tower and Canberra suburbs in the distance, even if it did still take over an hour to get to the outskirts

Then of course I came into Canberra through suburbs I’d never heard of, completely unfamiliar parts all built up in the 30yrs since I lived there! Made my way around to the Molonglo River despite the blows to the helmet from a couple of very antagonistic magpies and from there it was some well-labelled bike paths all the up through town to my stay for the night. Phew. Made it … but how the hell to I get back to Tumut next week?

Broken clouds, 14°C, Feels like 13°C, Humidity 46%, Wind 1m/s from E - by Klimat