There and back again.

We made it!

well, sort of... We set off on Friday afternoon and cycled as far as Chelsea. In this part of the world there's nothing except a 7/11 and caravan site, which was handy. We were welcomed to our pitch by the calls of Cockatoos and Rosellas, settling down for the evening. You can see a picture of John looking very pleased to be at our first camp.

We set off at about 10am on Saturday morning. We followed the beach all the way south and took in some incredible views, rounding the day up at Rosebud. It has a Californian feel to it. The campsite was right on the beach and we finally braved an evening swim. The water was around 25C and you can walk out 50 yards and it would still only be knee deep. A slight noisy campsite tonight but not from pesky neighbours but from the squawking Galahs – or as they call them here… “ Gilaaaars? ”.





We’re also eating well as you can see, bought a pack of frozen peas, it would have been a shame the waste any.









The third morning we cycled down to Sorrento to get the ferry to Queenscliff on the opposite side of the bay. We were feeling a bit tired and decided to only cycle a short distance to recover a little from our previous excesses; unfortunately after we cycled a short distance we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere and had to cycle a lot more the get to civilisation.
We freewheeled the last 2km into the town of Portarlington, a one street town with a slightly colder seafront and a campsite with awesome powershowers!!

We decided to take it easy on Monday. We were short of food and whilst restocking at the ‘Friendly Grocers’ of Portarlington we got chatting to a local chap who said it was long flat route to Geelong so we should be there in an hour(?). Overjoyed at this news we headed off; round the corner and were faced by 7 of the biggest, longest hills we’d ever seen!
…sometime later we pulled into the town of Drysdale and ate an enormous lunch – Lasagne for John and meatloaf, chips and gravy for Ann. Our stop for lunch saw the arrival of a strong wind and torrential rain. After battling a strong headwind for another two hours, we finally arrived in Geelong still happy and full…(but absolutely exhausted). Wondering when we would get our “day off” (it’s a hard life) we decided to get the train for the next 45km into Melbourne city centre as the west side of the bay is notoriously dull, with a distinct lack of campsites. The west side of the bay comprises of 2 petrol refineries, a sewage plant and a busy highway; so we didn’t feel like were missing anything. Once back in Melbourne we cycled the last 10km home in glorious afternoon sun to a home cooked meal and a comfy bed. Tour 1 complete. 199.61km cycled so far.