Day 1
I recently began part time at work which has given me a bit more time off. Some of that time off finally lined up with the annual (Not The)* Snowy Ride that my brother and his mates have done every November for the last ten or fifteen years.
*The Snowy Ride was originally a charity ride set up in the early 2000s to raise money for a kid suffering a rare cancer. 1000s of riders would attend and it got a bit out of hand with poor riding skills killing a few riders and endangering others so The Lads decided back in the day to do the ride a week early or a week after for their own safety and enjoyment.
Unfortunately, Steve had done himself a mischief on his mountain bike a week or so before the ride and was definitely not in any shape to ride a motorcycle. The other lads said I was still more than welcome to come along and with the time off, I planned to!
Rick was going as well so we decided to join forces and trailer our bikes to Sydney, thus saving us another 2000km and several days riding to and from the start point.
We went down a few days early as Rick and Scotty were going to head off a day early and I wanted to catch up with Steve to see how he was going and fix his busted mountain bike up for him. I also got roped into mowing his lawn as it was almost knee high with him being unable to start or even push his mower. Having Geoffrey drop around definitely helped cheer Steve up a bit too.
Those jobs done I rode off on the appointed day to the meeting point - Trappers Bakery in Goulburn. I arrived at a minute or two after the appointed 9am, the first there.
Within two minutes or so I heard the throaty growl of an Aprillia Tuono and a KTM 1290 Super Duke. Stu and Dave had arrived and it looked like it was going to be a mostly road bike crew this year. No problems though, I had my dirt agenda and if I had to ride it solo, then so be it. I've done plenty of solo missions. 😉
Over the next thirty minutes the rest of the crew rolled in. Greeting of old friends and meeting of some new ones over breakfast (and breakfast desert!) ensued.
Eventually someone (Stu I guess) herded the cats out to the bikes and it was time to set off.
First stop was to be Braidwood, 85km to the south. I hadn't ridden these roads since the late '90s when Steve and I would do our biannual pilgrimage to Phillip Island for the World Super Bikes or the 500GP. I had forgotten how pretty the countryside was around here.
Braidwood was busy for a Thursday morning. I had told the lads that I was turning west here to explore some dirt roads and a river crossing. Thomas, on Scotty's old V-Strom and Bruce on his MT09 had indicated that they would come with me.
Cool.
We headed out the sealed Bombay road which turned into Farrington Rd and a good crushed granite gravel surface. Crushed granite is like riding on small ball bearings - hmmm, wonder how the other guys are going on their road tyres along here.....?
Turning left into Mt Elrington Rd we were soon at the Shoalhaven river crossing. With such a picturesque crossing I faffed around for a while with my little drone, getting some footage of us crossing and re-crossing. Gotta wash the dust off the bike after all! 😁
We then proceeded to Cooma rd, turning south for a short distance before taking a left into Wallace's Gap Rd and heading east. After a very pleasant ride along tree lined lanes we skirted the outskirts of Majors Creek, a historic gold mining town in the mid 1800s. I would have turned into town for a look but didn't want to lead the other two blokes in circles, so I just stopped by a church on the outskirts of town for a quick photo.
I would have loved to ride down Majors Creek mountain road but it was closed due to a land slip so we headed north east to Monga road where we turned right towards Araluen road. This was all new country to me and I thank several YouTube content creators who recently rode this area for opening my eyes to it. It was a nice cool morning in beautiful country with interesing roads. Does it get any better?
Yes, yes it does! The drop into the Araluen Valley was narrow, twisty and bumpy - great fun on an ADV bike that can soak those bumps up. Thomas and Bruce chased me down the pass (more likely, I held them up 😆) and we soon popped out onto the open countryside around Araluen.
Araluen itself isn’t much to see, just some widely dispersed houses and an old pub. This area was settled in the gold rushes of the mid 1800s like Majors Creek.
We didn’t stop despite the lure of the pub that had a couple of adv bikes parked out the front. No, it was too early for that and we had a long section of winding dirt road down to the south coast of NSW.
Steve had warned me about this bit of dirt, saying that when they did it last year the first twenty kilometres or so was very twisty and constructed of loose crushed granite (ie mini ball bearings!) so I took it pretty easy. Pretty easy going into corners that is - power drifting out of them though! It was such a fun section of road, in spite of/because of the very high level of concentration required to “make progress”. I wondered how Thomas and Brucey were coping on their road tyres….
Stopping on top of a rise near a farm gate I didn’t have to wait long at all for them to arrive.
Thomas’ years of dirt bike experience were showing and Bruce was pushing along too despite his MT09’s ABS trying to spear him into the shrubbery. We took a ten minute break here where I broke out the DJI Neo to get a few shots. I showed Bruce how it worked and he had a go at flying it too which impressed him no end with how easy it is to control!
The warm morning had turned overcast now and the humidity ramped up noticeably despite the cooler weather. We were getting closer to the coast, hence the weather change but we still had a long ride ahead of us before we hit the Princes Highway at Moruya. The dirt from here was wide and quite flowing so we were able to clip along quite quickly.
Encountering almost zero traffic made for an enjoyable ride. What was encountered was easily dispatched.
Rolling into Moruya I waited maybe fifteen minutes before Thomas and Bruce rolled in.
The rest of the group - the road bike crowd - Stu, Dave, Geoffrey, Doug, Rick(ADV mounted), Richard, Zamo and Karen were coming down the Princes Highway from Batemans Bay. We didn’t know if we were ahead of or behind them but the plan was to regroup at the Narooma Hotel.
As we headed south it began to rain lightly. I was on the phone to Steve at the time and he looked at the BOM weather radar for me. A big shower was blowing in, across the coast and we were just riding into it. Good, I get to test the new Klim suit for its waterproofing! The traffic was pretty heavy along here so we just plodded along in the spray that was kicked up as the rain only lasted less than five minutes. By the time we arrived at the Narooma Hotel it was dry again.
Spying all the bikes outside the pub it was clear the others had beaten us. But not by much apparently. We grabbed a beer and took in the spectacular ocean views from this hilltop pub. Also spectacular was the pricing on the lunch menu! Nothing other than a bowl of chips was under $25. Lunch only needs to be something simple and relatively inexpensive which is why we usually stop at bakeries for lunch I guess. I decided that I wasn’t that hungry and decided to ride some more back roads down the coast instead of eating. A few of the others decided to join me and we agreed to meet the rest of the group at the Dromedary Hotel in Tilba.
The back roads were wet and a bit slippery. Even the dirt was slippery with some big patches of clay to keep us on our toes. But it was worth it as the road twisted, very tightly, through dairy and hobby farm country in the hinterland. We suddenly popped out in Tilba and joined the others who were already parked outside the pub.
Wandering inside we were greeted by a very friendly publican in a quaint old pub….that had modern craft beer on tap! The Amber Ale was excellent!
Happy days!
(Yes, I am a beer snob and almost can’t stand the bland mainstream beers that the big brewers had inflicted on us consumers for a century or so)
Soon after we pulled in another two groups of bikes pulled up. The street was full of bikes.... doesn't anyone work on a Thursday any more?!
After one delicious beer here we were back on the road again. We took a turn off the busy highway into Bermagui road. This keep us on a nice quiet road that hugs the coast. There was almost no traffic and the road was an awesome bike road, twisting and turning its way southward to our overnight stop at Tathra. This bit of road was so good there were no more stops, we just enjoyed it's seemingly never ending flow.
Steve and I had stayed at the Tathra Hotel a couple of times in the late ‘90s and early 2000s on the way to/back from Phillip Island. To say I was surprised at what greeted us is an understatement! The original facade of the simple pub we knew is there but the interior and motel have been completely rebuilt with a craft beer brewery and modern, huge kitchen added.
Let’s just say a great night was had by all, enjoying great food washed down by a multitude of fresh beers. They have so many beers on tap that there was no way to test them all.
I can see why the lads (and ladette - hey Karen!) stay here each year clearly, a return trip would be in order. 😉
Today was a great day on the bike. I covered 524 kilometres (325M) with a reasonable chunk of dirt (see hatching on the Ride With GPS link below). The weather was mostly on our side and to ride so many new-to-me roads was a sheer pleasure.
