Yesterday, I went down to Taren Point to pick up some ‘hoardings’ for my trailer. (This I did after a radio appearance on BondiFM – thanks Serena & John.) The round trip clocked up 68km and took 3:19 on the bike – Sydney is a LOT hillier than Melbourne and almost NONE of the streets are straight – this created quite a challenge for this Melburnian cyclist!
I left Sydney this morning for Gosford, twice – I had to go back to Bondi from the city centre to pick up my trailer flag. I knew there had to be a reason I couldn’t find the bike path over the Harbour Bridge!!
On advice from the guys from Bike The Earth, I decided to go via Palm Beach and catch the ferry to Ettalong Beach – a much more picturesque trip. After going down and then up the Spit – big hill that! – I turned left and headed for the Wakehurst Parkway through Frenchs Forest to keep as much as possible off the ‘main drag’.
This turned out to be a great move – once I reached Warringah Rd, the road surface was excellent; the shoulder was reasonable and the downhill from there ended, not with another uphill, with a flat ride back to the highway through lovely countryside. It was then a bit of ‘up and down’ into Palm Beach. This is a beautiful part of the world!
The ferry trip was all of half an hour and then I was back on the bike for the final 20km into Gosford and my sister-in-law Noellene’s place. It’s good to be home – even if it’s someone else’s!
I travelled 93.4km today (including the geographical embarassment in Sydney central looking for the bridge bike path and the return to Bondi) in 4:36 ‘saddle time’ to give an average of 20.2km/h – I recorded a new best maximum of 67.6km/h going down the hill from Warringah Rd!