All in a day of travelling…

Yesterday was a full day of hard cycling and adventure after leaving Byron Bay… I was up early and on the road cycling at 7:30am, destination Nimbin, about 70 km in the mountains from Byron. Well, I think I headed directly over every big mountain in New South Wales to get there! Up, and up and up and up, it just wouldn’t give me a break. Luckily we had cloud cover and cool temperatures otherwise I would have been dead. Took a wrong turn at one stage and had to go back 3 km – it was one of the rare downhill bits where I thought to myself, man I’m glad I’m not going UP that!, only to realize I was going the wrong way and minutes later I was going up it. Ugh!

Sometime around 10:30am I made it to the small village of Federal, about 20 km from Byron, and stopped in the store for a drink. As I looked at my map trying to gather the strength to do another 50 km, the guy in the shop suggested that I stop fpr the night at Minyun Falls in Nightcap National Park, just another 12 km from Federal. He said that the hills’hadn’t even started yet,’ and that was all I needed to hear before I changed my plan.

So I bought some extra food at the store and soon I was off for Minyun Falls. He wasn’t kidding about the hills. It was uphill for the entire 12 km, and quite steep at that. Hard work! It felt SO good to finally get to Minyun Falls, and from there I knew it was only 2 km to the campsite. It was only 1pm, but I knew I was done for the day. I walked out to have a look at the falls, and on the way back, stopped to look at some kookaburras with some guy who was pointing them out to me. We got to talking, and he wound up inviting me for a drive with him and his friend up to Border Ranges National Park for the day. He said they could put my bike in the truck and drop me off at a campground later. Well I had nothing else to do for the day and wouldn’t be able to see that park otherwise, so I said why not.

So off we went, Aubrey, John, and I. They are both from the UK, but John was living in Byron for the last 8 years just before recently moving to New Zealand. We had a great day, first driving through Nimbin, and then up to the Border Ranges, where we walked through rainforests, saw 3,000 year old Antarctic beeches, spotted wallabies on the road, and even saw a huge dead python (road kill). It was loads more fun than I would have had in my tent in the rain all afternoon.

Last night they dropped me off here, just 8 km from where they are staying, and today they offered to drop me off at Murwillumbah, which is where I was headed after Nimbin. I wound up sneaking in the campground for free last night – no real bargain because the toilets and showers were locked, but I managed a sponge bath in the laundry room sink.

Man it felt good to FINALLY get to the top!

Hey thats a cool plant

Gotta love the rainforest

Add comment April 12th, 2003