TravellingStrom

The plan today is to do part of the Great Ocean Road, so first up I had to pack up, it was cold and cloudy with a few splatters of rain, Melbourne weather in other words.

I left about 9am and headed to Frankston after fuelling up and met Greg at his motel, this was only 15km away to the south of where I was staying.

Then we headed down the east coast of Port Phillip Bay towards Sorrento where the ferry across the bay left from and travelled to Queenscliff. This saved hours of travel by not having to go around the whole bay via Melbourne itself. It cost $40 for the trip though including bike and took about 40 minutes.

At the other side where we were parked was a bus full of school girls on a day trip maybe, but they were waving at me and carrying on, so I pointed to my website address on the panniers and took a photo of them. Here you go girls, whoever you are, I hope you had a great trip. 🙂

This is a map of the area we travelled; t was not a long day, but a full one.

We took as many roads near the coast as possible without using highways. We had decided that Apollo Bay was a good destination to start with and we could change that if needed. We had put our wet gear on when we departed the boat as it looked like rain, but we seemed to have missed most of it, so we pulled over nearly right away and shed some gear. On the road we stopped at Anglesea where we had some lunch, we had passed the Bells Beach turnoff, but not being into surfing it was not a major concern, also the prices at Torquay were a total rip off, obviously it was a surfing town and that was how they made money. Mind you, the price of a burger at the shop in Anglesea was not cheap either. It tasted good though, and it was hot so no worries. There was a stop for a photo and add some gear as it was cold and blowey, at this point we were also saw a large group of bikers heading the other way.

I had heard from others to allow a few days because of the traffic, but we had the road nearly to ourselves, only the occasional camper or caravan, so even though we were stopping we still were doing the distance in good time. We stopped at Split Point for a photo of the lighthouse, but did not do the tour.

You can see the type of weather that was around from this next photo, the one after that is an old tree carved into figurines.

A few minutes down the road up on the side of the cliffs I saw this square house with a connecting tube to get to the road, a very unusual design.

And not long after that there is the memorial arch. The Great Ocean Road was a project that was government sponsored to settle the returned servicemen back into society after the First World War.

There were great twisty turns on this stretch and it made it more exciting when you come around a corner and the full force of the wind picks you up and throws you sideways, but the scenery is great.

You really have to watch the right handers though as the rocks force oncoming traffic wider than normal.

I saw a sign after this which said historic marker, it was a gravestone to commemorate a shipwreck of which there were many along this coast.

Around about 3pm we got to Cape Patton lookout, which had a very good view of the coast, of course 🙂

We eventually got to Apollo Bay where a decision was made that due to the cold and wet and wind, gale force wind we would stay in a motel. It was right next to a pub, so of course we had a beer, but we decided to have a drink at the furthest pub first. Outside the window you can see why we did not camp, not quite horizontal rain, but close enough for me and was a good call by Greg 🙂

We ended up back at the pub behind the motel when we found a dry moment outside and met some lovely people, this place also had a fire, good stuff. Some of these photos are from Greg’s camera, his was the newer version Olympus like mine, but had a wider angle lens so some different shots could be done, I may look into upgrading mine 🙂 We had a great night, but forgot to eat, as you do sometimes. Here are some mixed photos, Greg’s are without my watermark of course. I have lost a page from my notepad so their names are gone, hopefully Greg will read this and send me them again so I can add them in. The young couple were riding a bike also and were from Geelong, Sam and Mark. The other couple were English travellers, ? ? It was a late night anyway 🙂

Day – 226km
Trip – 21,923km
top of page