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| A good sign |
To state the obvious there are many different types of cycle ride you can take, the commute cycle in the rain, the commute cycle in the sun, the training cycle, the technical cycle, the hard cycle, the gentle cycle, the Sunday clear your head cycle, and much else. Then there are the cycles you cycle long distance for, and for want of a less cheesy phrase, lets call them soul cycles. Today was one of them, and quite simply it’s why I do rides like this.
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Truck approaching from behind at
first light
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The biological rationale for why days like this are so special is not really PHD worthy. Exercise pumps constant endorphins into your body for 12 hours in a vitamin D rich environment. If you take out some of the niggles or struggles like the wind swinging square behind you, and stimulate your visual receptors with beautiful and unique landscapes, it’s hardly surprise the odd day on a trip like this is extra special.
But it’s even stranger as not sure I’d expected the Nullabor plain itself to be so wonderful. Where the Hay plains were bleak and wretched there is something otherworldly about out here. With 115 miles without a roadhouse, farm or any other type of formalised human support, I was out on the road half an hour before first light. Imagine the stars were spectacular, but I was mostly looking down through my front light beam at the road ahead.
It was an extraordinary of a sight seeing the roadhouse lights disappear into pitch black in the mirror as I cycle off far enough down the road. Bar two road trains that passed was just me in the dark, on the flat. Sure I should’ve been worrying about dingoes or lairy feral camels, but it was actually just profoundly peaceful.
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| Giant's Cornwall. Pic doesn't do it justice |
Then dawn broke, and I was treated to
one of the most spectacular sunrises. Although for most of the day
the land rolled around a little, and trees appeared at intervals, for
sunrise it was out on the completely flat, completely treeless desert
plain. No idea why but the sun at sunrise here is huge, properly
properly huge. I went to take a picture, but put the camera back.
Sometimes you don’t want to spend forever explaining what it was
really like, you just want to remember things in your mind’s eye.
Even with the slight roll and the odd treed stretches, it was basically just mile upon mile of virtually treeless plain, with the wind propelling me along at quite a lick, with almost nowhere to stop. Your mind wanders something special in such a place.
So what made it so special? Well if you find this part of the Eyre Highway on a map you will see it almost hugs the coast at the top of the Great Australian Bight. As the mind was drifting off you would look over to the left and in the haze you were looking out to the ocean, but it looked too high. It wasn’t till I took some of the 200/300m tracks off the road that I realised why.
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| Teddies in a tree, why not |
Flat desert plain, simply runs out, and drops down vast cliffs and headlands into the Ocean. It’s like a giant’s version of the North Cornish coast. Standing on the edge it looks like some drawing from a dweeby fantasy comic. Desert, highway, desert, the end of Australia. I’d been warned by cyclists coming the other way, that it was quite something, but it’s a properly mind blowing landscape. It feels like the very end of the Earth. So that is how the day panned out, flat featureless easy riding, interspersed with mind blowing coastal vistas.
On top of this the drivers out here are ace. This has got to be one of the friendliest stretches of road in the world. The only commercial vehicles are long distance truckers. With space and few other road users they give you plenty of room, waves and thumbs up as they pass. Everyone else is on holiday. It’s pretty much identical in every car that come past, toots, waves, and at least one of passengers pointing a camera or phone at you. Just as their friendliness is part of my experience, seeing guys out doing stuff like this is part of theirs. It’s mutually beneficial.
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| Cool company for lunch |
There was one exception. A lady in her 60s who had to brake slightly to let a truck past me coming the other way (curiously this happens not infrequently. Given there are up to 20 mins breaks between vehicles, why they get bunched up round me so frequently is a statistical anomaly I can’t work out). She screamed at me to get off the road. You can only conclude that if you’ve made it to such an age with that little empathy for your fellow human your life has been a huge waste of oxygen, agricultural land and scarce fossil fuels.
Luckily she was a one off, and as if to balance her out, my company for lunch was truly epic. I’d ridden on and on to 14:00 and nearly 85 miles before lunch, keen to chew through the miles. On approaching the turn off I’d settle on for lunch out the distant haze came a vehicle I couldn’t figure out at all. Genuinely thought I was hallucinating when it turned out to be a bloke called Ian and his dog on a horse drawn carriage, trailing a second pony. He’s on a three year mission to do a follow the coast the whole way round the country, and has spent 7 weeks getting from Perth.
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Every petrol forecourt need a rubbish
concrete kangaroo
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He pulled up for lunch as well, and even better produced an ice cold coke from a solar powered fridge and insisted I have it. He’d stopped there specifically as behind a bush a trucker had left two hay bales and fresh water (explaining the other 10 litre water carriers I’d past on the road side down the way). I helped secure and feed the horses, and thoroughly enjoyed company over lunch.
30 miles further on, and I’m at the Western Australia border, as you can see above. This has been a very good day.
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More trucks I know, but these are cool
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Miles: 116 Nullabor Roadhouse – Border Village roadhouse.
Breakfast – Standard
Lunch – Tuna sandwich, crisps, and rather too many jelly beans, with Ian, his dog and horses.
Dinner – Pork chops, chips and salad – Roadhouse – Really rather good.
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