Ride #2 - North Coast - Forever Remaining Flexible
They say you should "plan the ride, then ride the plan". Great advice but sometimes "remaining flexible" with a Plan B comes in very handy.
As I mentioned in the previous blog, the GT bonus hunt in my local area is just about complete, so I planned to head off for a multi-day ride in February.
A look at our social calendars showed that my wife and I needed to be in Sydney from around 15-February, so an early Feb ride was appropriate, with the week starting Monday, 6-Feb looking perfect, and for some unknown reason the West-Nor-West ride looked the most inviting.
This ride would take in Mudgee, Dubbo, up to Coonamble and returning home via the Golden Highway with the Dunedoo & Merriwa grain silo murals.
So, in late January, a spreadsheet was pulled together laying out the ride timetable, the route, where the bonus locations were, where suitable accommodation was and where the all-important dinner venues were.
A quick phone call to a couple of my riding friends resulted in a riding companion for the February bonus ride, and the pre-ride "count-down" began.
On Thursday, 2-Feb, a quick check of the Australian Government's Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) weather forecast suggested a significant rain event was expected on the upcoming Wednesday.
Now, I don't have a problem riding in the rain, but if it is easily avoided why not change the plan? So, in the spirit of staying flexible, the ride was brought forward 1 day to a Sunday, 5-Feb departure.
On Friday evening, another quick check on the BOM showed that the rain forecast still held, but that the day-time temperatures for Coonamble on Monday, prior to the rain event, were going to be more than 40*C / 105*F, with much of the surrounding areas in the 35*C /95*F range.
Certainly not ATGATT weather. OK, time for Plan B.
The BOM still showed that it was too hot to head West Nor-West, the accommodation was expensive if we headed West due to a major international GT Endurance Race being held at Mount Panorama, the rain front was coming from the South & South West, and the only thing out to the East is the Pacific Ocean so that just left the North Coast.
So on Saturday morning, I pulled together yet another spreadsheet with a new Northerly route planned out and a new Northerly ride plan produced.
This ride would take us almost due North along the M1 Motorway / Pacific Hwy through Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour and up to Grafton, before turning around and making a mad dash for home before the rain front arrived in Sydney on Tuesday afternoon.
Reasonably priced accommodation was found and booked, and it was all system "go" for a 07:15 Sunday morning departure.
However, on Saturday afternoon, an unexpected mini cyclone / rain bomb with gale-force winds hit Port Macquarie resulting in many roads being closed due to fallen trees and buildings losing their roofs.
No problem, because by now I had become quite adept at being flexible and inventive.
The Port Macq bonuses were removed from the ride plan, and a reshuffle of the sequence of the remaining bonus location meant we could still keep our accommodation bookings and still have a few enjoyable days of riding.
I went to sleep on Saturday night full of anticipation for the first decent ride for 2023.
Sunday morning dawned to clear skies and a pleasant temperature and I was soon eagerly on my way Northwards.
That was until I was about 3 km up the road when I realised that in my eagerness to get started I had forgotten to put my helmet's visor back on after cleaning it.
I hate turning back, but riding for 3 days without a visor was not an option, so I did a quick u-turn and headed back home to get the missing visor.
OK, visor on helmet, helmet on head, let's finally head North.
Unfortunately, 3 km up the road I realised that in my haste I had forgotten to put my prescription riding glasses on after I had put my helmet on.
I know I had taken my riding glasses off when I got home because I can't get my helmet off with my glasses on, and I remember carefully laying them on top of my tail bag before I ran inside my home to get the helmet visor, which meant that as I was not wearing my them now, they were probably lying on the road somewhere behind me.
Bugger. Prescription bi-focal riding glasses are not cheap. Luckily, I had an old pair of riding glasses in my saddle bag so the ride would continue. Besides, it would be bad luck to turn back twice in a row!
With all that drama behind me, I soon met up with my riding partner at Berowra and we made our way to the Oak Cafe at Freeman's Waterhole for coffee and doughnuts, the breakfast of champions.
After exchanging pleasantries, catching up on all the gossip about our friends, and finishing our morning coffee, we headed up to the small rural village of Kendall, about 230 km north for lunch at Miss Nellie's Cafe.
Miss Nellie's is a small rural cafe, run by who else but Miss Nellie, that operates out of an old rural store and serves great home-cooked food, with her sweet cakes and tarts the speciality.
That was until 2021 when the Camden Haven River flooded and the water level reached over 2 m / 7 ft deep throughout the store.
The building suffered considerable damage with 1 side wall blown out by the water pressure, many of the old wooden floor and wall boards warped and the stinking mud soaked into every nook and cranny.
Here are some photos to give you some idea of the disaster.
Most people would probably just "walk away" or maybe demolish the old store and build a new modern "soul-less" shop, but not Miss Nellie.
It's been over 2 years now, and the old store is slowly being rebuilt from the inside out, keeping the original rural store feeling.
And to keep her business operating, Miss Nellie parked 2 mobile home caravans which had been converted to operate as commercial kitchens on the land and continued to serve her customers great food.
The resilience of rural folk never fails to amaze me.
Normally, I try and park as close to the bonus as possible, but in this case, I felt that discretion was needed and I ended up parking legally a short distance from the bonus.
There were 2 reasons for my decision. Firstly, there were some "No Parking / No Standing" signs near the toilet block, which I would usually turn a "blind eye" to for a quick photo, but secondly and more importantly, there was a manned Police car parked not far from the toilet block.
Sometimes you roll the dice, and sometimes you just move along.
With several suitable photos taken for the "2 photos" submission method, we headed up highway to the town of Wauchope, about 25 km away.
From my research, I'd identified that Wauchope had 3 murals. Two of these murals were close together and would run afoul of the 90 m / 100 yd rule, so only 1 would be acceptable, and the third mural was on a bridge pylon down by the riverside.
Trouble was, this mural may not be there as in 2021 and again in 2022, Wauchope suffered significant flooding of the Hastings River and the river-side park had been largely washed away.
However, even 1 mural would make the visit worthwhile, and much to my surprise we found that the river-side park had been re-constructed and the bridge pylon mural also was soon "in the bag".
From Wauchope, we took a winding back road, complete with a dirt section where the tarred road had been destroyed by the floods and not yet replaced, to Kempsey about 55 km away, for a few more murals and our Sunday overnight accommodation.
Sunday night's dinner was at the nearby Returned Services Club where I enjoyed some BBQ Spare Ribs together with a fine Taylor's Shiraz, whose tasting notes read: -
This Shiraz is a dark red colour with ruby red hues. On the nose, the wine displays dark plum, red currant and red cherry fruits along with subtle chocolate and a touch of oak-derived spice. The palate is plump & generous with ripe fruit characters of plum, cherry and redcurrant. Mocha coffee and subtle aniseed characters are also present along with vanilla oak to balance the fruit flavours.
I am not sure I found all those attributes, but it was none the less, very enjoyable.
Monday was spent exploring Macksville, about 50 km away, then Coffs Harbour and Grafton.
I should make special note that Coffs Harbour has been designated a "Street Art Town" because of the Town Council's "Lane-Way Art" project.
In the business district of Coffs, there are several narrow lane-ways. These lane-ways were constantly being defaced with graffiti until the Town Council came up with a project that involved local street artists to paint "protective" murals on the building walls in the lane-ways.
I estimate that there would probably be 25 murals side by side in the 4 lane-ways, however, the 90 m / 100 yd rule means that only a few will qualify.
From Coffs, we headed to Grafton for a mural or two, and lunch of a Maccas cheeseburger, a bottle of chilled water and some "quality time" in the much-needed air-conditioning as the mid-day temperature in Grafton was hovering around the 33*C mark.
After leaving Grafton, we headed back South to the town of Woolgoogla (aka Woopi to the locals) for 2 more bonuses and our Monday night accommodation.
Woopi has an example of water-tower art, located up on the headland, overlooking the ocean.
This migration is around 11,000 km / 7,000 mi and is completed non-stop. Impressive.
The Blue Whales were almost hunted into extinction, but since being declared a protected species, their numbers have rebound and they are no longer considered endangered.
Woopi has the largest Sikh community in Australia and is renowned for it's spicy curries. The town even hosted a 3 day Curry Festival each year before covid, so my riding partner and I were looking forward to a good Indian curry for dinner.
But for some reason, Monday was Malaysian night at the nearby restaurant, and instead of the anticipated Indian curry, we had a choice of Malaysian curries instead.
For those readers not familiar with curries, Malaysian curry is very special because it combines all three cuisine - Malay, Indian and Chinese.
It's not as thick as Indian curries, and it uses aromatics such as lemon grass that are usually used in Malay cooking, and for the Chinese component, you'll see the use of ingredients like light soy sauce.
My choice was the Ayam Panggang, a grilled chicken fillet with a creamy Malay satay sauce, and because of the cream sauce, I felt that a bottle of red wine may not have been the best choice, so a crisp Semillon Sauvignon Blanc white wine was chosen instead.
Tuesday dawned overcast but dry, and a quick check on the BOM should that the forecast rain had slipped by 12 hours. This meant that we would have a dry run back to Sydney, some 550 km to the South.
The M1 / Pacific Hwy is your typical "super slab" with no redeeming features from a motorcyclist's perspective, other than being a quick and easy route to get from Point A to Point B.
For some reason, I always find the homeward journey on any ride to be the least interesting. They all seem to involve cruising along the highway, listening to a random selection of songs through my Sena unit and just "chilling out" as the kilometres roll by.
After travelling around 250 km, we stopped at a small village named Nabiac for a barista-brewed coffee and some raspberry sponge tart, and as an extra reward, we found an unknown mural in the village centre.
From Nabiac it would be a quick if somewhat boring ride of around 250 km down the remainder of the M1, with the highlight of this final section being able to play "dodge'm cars" with the 18-wheel semi-trailer trucks that seem to think that "might has right" on the Hawkesbury Bridge up-hill section.
This uphill section of the M1 should really be widened to 4 or 5 lanes because of the increased traffic volumes from the Central Coast, but it is difficult terrain and probably won't happen any time soon.
After surviving this "adventure", it was a welcomed change to return to the relatively calm traffic of the Northern Beaches.
All up over the 3 days of riding, we travelled 1,263 km, burnt through 63 litres of fuel, enjoyed 2 great meals and a couple of bottles of very good wine, not to mention bagging a few more bonuses for the Grand Tour.
Time to start planning another ride for late February / early March.
Until next time, " keep the rubber side down, the shiny side up and may your lid never skid "
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