May 13, 2023
Day 3: Morgan to just past Waikerie
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Another cold but pleasant morning to set off. I had a minor mechanical on the way out of the caravan park, my centre stand fell off. I had trouble with this on the last trip and clearly didn't fix it properly. The stand was damaging the frame and I made an extra piece to protect it. Unfortunately, it then required a longer bolt which I did not add. I carried the stand with me to fix later and resisted the temptation to throw it away in frustration. We left Morgan on the ferry heading for Cadell, the idea was to miss out on as much of the Goyder Highway as possible. I hadn't been looking forward to the ride through the Riverland because the roads seemed busy and unfriendly to cyclists.
The road via Cadell was very quiet. We didn't actually go into Cadell but noticed that the caravan park was community run, a good sign. We bought a bag of dried apricots roadside for $10. I was hoping for lots more stuff in the Riverland but it seems that pumpkins were the only thing readily available. Not ideal bike riding food.
The morning was cool and misty with the lagoons looking decidedly eerie.
As the morning wore on it became quite warm, the road was good but I made the unfortunate mistake of looking at google maps. This suggested deviating from the road and heading down a smaller road, we decided to go with it and ended up pushing the bikes through some grape vines in the sand. Google maps bike option really is a last resort. This little adventure over with, the road to Ramco and Waikerie was very pleasant. Annette had started the day feeling unwell, as had I, due to last nights dinner, a quick, prepackaged Indian meal. I came good but Annette was struggling. It was clear that we weren't going to make big kilometres today but more importantly we had to rethink the meal situation.
We rolled into Waikerie round about lunch time and headed straight up the hill to the supermarket. The climb from the river to the shops in some of these towns is quite extreme. We had come to the realisation that we needed a better meal plan, large supermarkets are in most reasonably sized towns so it was a matter of carrying enough stuff each time to get us to the next town. The main complication is that we are vegetarian. You see the vast variety of sliced meats on display and think it must be a lot easier for carnivores. The good thing about travelling in winter is that goods requiring refrigeration are okay out of the fridge. We bought a heap more food than we really required and headed down to the river for lunch. All of these river towns have really nice picnic areas by the river. We spent a good deal of the afternoon eating and relaxing. Annette decided that she was well enough to continue so, rather than paying for a campsite in Waikerie, we went to catch the second ferry of the day.
We turned off on to Devlin's Pound Road which eventually links up to the Goyder Highway. After about 10km it seemed wise to start looking for a camp site rather than push Annette to the limit. I found a track into the scrub that led to a bore and there were good camp spots out of the way of the road.
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10 months ago
Today's ride: 48 km (30 miles)
Total: 179 km (111 miles)
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