My destination today is up north of Newcastle and south of Forster and I was planning on staying with a Vstrom rider called Dave who had offered a place a while back.
A slow start, finished some net stuff as it was working now. I noticed where my bike was parked that there were holes in the ground and found the resident active in one of them, I stayed away, they bite 🙂 Lucky I had a tent and ground sheet.
Now, Bathurst is famous for the race circuit of Mount Panorama, which is used for the big muscle races and the Bathurst 1000km race. The circuit is a public street and has winerys and other residents in there, so it is possible to go for a ride around, but not at breakneck speed, they will book you. Come for a tour with me.
After that I went to the museum near pit lane for a decko. Out the front is a tribute to Peter Brock, who I have mentioned before, well this is the race he won many times and was named King of the Mountain.
Then inside a lot of old cars and new ones as well as bikes and of course a tribute to the circuit itself. Here is a selection.
Then some Brocky stuff including the car he ‘unbuilt’ when he was a kid and learnt to race with.
There was a lot more cars and bikes.
Then after that I did another non flying lap of the circuit, this time without taking photos, I would love to do it at speed 🙂
Then it was on the road again, I took the back roads south of the highway on the way to Lithgow.
After Lithgow it was the road across the Blue Mountains, a very nice road.
After Windsor I headed north on the Putty Road, I had heard of this road, so it was good to have a go. Mind you, it was not as much fun as it could be as my rear tyre was squared off again so there was not much tread to grip the road when I leant over. Around halfway it started to get cold and there were a few drops of rain, which had been forecast, so I put all the wet gear on.
And it was not long in coming
This meant I slowed right down and kept the bike upright as the road was now slippery.
After a while I got to Singleton and from there it was a main highway towards Newcastle and very wet by now. The traffic was bad and near Maitland the bottlenecks were real bad, it took me over an hour to get clear and start heading north, mainly because of school zones etc.
One of the things I have noticed down this was is that because there are so many fuel stops I forget to plan the day, so it was lucky I spotted the flashing tank and filled up, it was a welcome relief as my gloves were full of water 😦 For future reference remind myself to tuck the gloves inside the jacket waterproof liner, not outside as it just channelled all the water into them.
The rain was set in its ways and very annoying.
There would have been some nice views of the lakes if the sun was out, but at this stage, to me, it was just more wet stuff!
I eventually found Dave’s place up a dirt track, well mud really, and after a quick shower we headed to a local club for dinner before having some more beers at his place. And he had fast internet so we checked a few roads out, and the weather the next day was going to be wet 😦 A great night meeting a new Vstrom rider, his previous bike was a beamer R65, another convert 🙂
Day – 542km
Trip – 29,160
TravellingStrom 