For 36 hours last week clouds blocked the sky and rain fell steadily. This was a Very Good Thing. Dams filled up, the warm weather allowed some grass to grow before winter, and crops could be planted. The minor inconvenience of a few closed roads was generally considered to be neither here nor there. Unless you were in NSW - in that case you had my sympathy and I hope you had a snorkel.
Not being in NSW, we headed off to finish the last little bit of the Roma-Surat link. Of course we didn't check Qld Traffic for road closures, because we already knew that the main road to Surat was open.
Undeterred, we decided to take a short cut along a little dirt road beside the river. The dirt road had a 'no through road' sign, but we ignored that because we knew it wasn't strictly true.
The dirt road was heavy going, consisting mainly of a thin layer of sand over thick, slippery silt/mud. Sometimes we had to walk. No-one fell off, but there may have been the odd inelegant dismount here and there.
Not enough to clag up the wheels, but it got in everything. The gears were crunching. The brakes were crunching. We were... not crunching exactly. More squelching.
We probably won't visit Surat again before we go, other than passing through or working, so we took the time for a coffee and visited the museum.
One of the coaches that used to run for Cobb & Co on the Yuleba-Surat run, back in the days when travel was ridiculously expensive and uncomfortable, and women weren't allowed to sit on the outside seat beside the driver.
There will be a little hiatus in the riding now. The bikes have been sent to our LBS (400km away) and will remain there until we collect them after the wedding shenanigans. At which point we will a) finish the pesky blue bit, b) complete Roger's missing link between Roma and Toowoomba and c) have a mere 7 weeks left until we walk out of work for ever.
Today's ride: 17 km (11 miles) Total: 833 km (517 miles)
