A Birthday Bike Ride

Summer has sashayed on to some other space, with autumn ambling into the southern part of the Apple Isle. We've seen a gradual cooling off over the past couple of weeks. Autumn can be a brilliant time of year for biking but yesterday morning saw heavy and complete cloud cover early. At least it wasn't raining, although the forecast suggested showers were possible.

Hey, you only get one birthday per year, right? Dianne had booked herself into an early morning exercise class and was then going off to visit her Mum. I really wanted to get out on the bike, despite having a heavy cold that had returned after our Cygnet ride five days earlier. I had deliberately taken it easy on that ride, conscious of the fact that this cold has been hanging around for awhile now, and seems to reassert itself every time I try to do something.

Reasoning that things would be fine if I took it easy and just went out to Granton and back, I set off at a very easy pace. Flat riding, almost no wind, everyone else going to work - great therapy, eh! And didn't it feel good! I've been hanging around for days, mostly talking to a handkerchief. As a bit of a diversion, we did take ourselves off to see Hail Caesar! the other day, and that relieved the boredom very nicely. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but we loved the offbeat humour and many nods to the Hollywood film industry of the 1950's.

As I rolled out along the bike path enjoying the feeling of cruising along on the bike once again, I thought I might go just a bit further so that I could get the fifty kilometres that Di and I have set as a baseline distance for our training rides. I thought that I might give her a call when I turned around just past the entrance into Stefano Luciano winery and osteria to see if she wanted to join me for breakfast at Jackman & McRoss in New Town.  

Then I thought some more ... wouldn't be even better to ride my age on this, my birthday morning of  peaceful pedalling? This idea fit in well with crossing the bridge and heading up to the bakery in Brighton for a quiet, solo breakfast. So that's exactly what I did. Here's the Cannondale parked in front of the bakery ...

Inside I went for a French breakfast: des croissants, du confiture et du café. Merveilleux!
A lovely peaceful way to start my birthday. And I was lucky enough to have the bakery almost all to myself, as it was just on 9:00 a.m. and everyone else was already at work.

After a pleasant pause, back on the bike I got. An uneventful ride brought me back into Bridgewater, and the approach to the Bridgewater Bridge. It's something of a relic and really needs replacing, but it looks unlikely that the funds are going to be made available any time soon. 

Anyway, as I was coming into the roundabout just before the bridge a garbage truck came trundling past, going just slightly faster than me. Carpé Diem was the first thing that crossed my mind and on his tail I jumped! He had slowed a little leading into the roundabout, so it was easy to get on, and I managed to stay on for the kilometre and a half to the roundabout on the other side of the river at Granton. I stole a couple of quick glances down at the speedo while I was on the tail of this fortuitous truck and was chuffed to see that I was zipping along at 55 kilometres per hour. (Even an old fart of 61 likes to get a little rush every now and again. Hmmm. Pity I didn't get up to my new age, eh!)

The rest of the ride home was nice and cruisy despite the slight headwind,which I could hardly complain about since I'd had the benefit of it being on my behind on the way out.

My age came up on the computer just a kilometre or so before arriving home. (Of course it's much easier for those of us who live in countries that speak the international language of kilometres that it is for those of you who are domiciled in the UK and USA.) The return journey from home to the Heritage Bakehouse is normally just under 62 kilometres, but I'd detoured to say hello to John the Carbon Repair Man in Brighton (who wasn't in his workshop as it turned out) so I got up and over the 62 kilometre mark.

I had a quiet afternoon while Di prepared a delicious dinner, and a new watch arrived in the post: something special to use on the big hike we're doing in the Alps later in the year. The day was topped off beautifully with the arrival of our dinner guests, friends visiting from the mainland, who came bearing gifts even though they weren't aware it was my birthday. What a beauty! Now, if someone can just shut off the green stream that is coming out of my head, things would really be peachy ...

A Quick Trip to Frenchmans Cap

Exchanging one Tasmanian gem for another

Our friend Pete had come over from sub-tropics of northern New South Wales, keen to do a bushwalk in temperate Tasmania. His preference was for the Walls of Jerusalem. Unfortunately due to fires the area was closed, so we came up with an alternative plan. Pete had never been to Frenchmans Cap before and the weather looked okay. Although the Walls" are now part of the Southwest Wilderness World Heritage area, they are really on the Central Plateau, whereas Frenchmans Cap - despite being not very far away in a straight line - is truly in the wild southwest. For those of you not highly familiar with our beautiful island, these are two quite different areas: different geology, different weather and different vegetation.

Anyway that sorted, Saturday morning saw us at the trailhead ready to roll ...

The first landmark on the walk is the crossing of the famous Franklin River, only a few minutes along the track ...

... and then it's right into the forest. There are a few distractions along the track ...

... before breaking out into more open territory ...

The next major landmark is the crossing of the Loddon River ...

Until fairly recent times the bridges over both the Franklin and Loddon didn't exist. A bit of jiggery-poker with a log and a wire were the go back then.  Much easier these days!

Also until fairly recent times the next stage of the journey involved traversing the infamous Loddon Plains, also known as the "Sodden Lodden", which involved up to six kilometres of mud-wading - depending on how much rain had fallen in the days and weeks beforehand. For a bit of a glimpse of what that was like have a look at this short YouTube clip ...

Nowadays, thanks to Dick Smith, the Sodden Lodden is no more. This map shows approximately where the new section of track goes to avoid the mud ...

Here's where the new track departs the old track ...

... and here's a glimpse of what at least part of the new track is like ...

We soon caught views of the hills ahead, although the tops of the peaks were hiding in cloud ...

There is a bit of forest to negotiate before reaching the hut, where the mud reasserts itself ...

... but beyond that more new track work is currently underway ...

It's all a bit raw at the moment, but once the vegetation starts growing back around the edges it will look much better.

After a bit more forest the Lake Vera hut appears. Pete's first move was to get a little afternoon nap ...

We'd gone in with light packs and the idea was to go to the Cap and back to Lake Vera the next day. An eight o'clock start in drizzle didn't augur greatly for the day, but we had hopes of at least getting to the top; if we were really lucky we'd get a view.

The stretch from Lake Vera to Lake Tahune and the hut below Frenchmans is largely through rainforest. It can be a little slow and tedious in the wet, but beautiful nonetheless. Quite a few of these log "ladders" have been put in in various places ...

Other good works by the track builders including this bridge ...

... make life a lot easier than it once was.

Once through Barron Pass views of Lakes Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen and Millicent appear to the southwest of the Cap ...

As you've no doubt deduced, we weren't getting grand vistas to look at, so we concentrated on the minutiae close at hand ...

Native Pepperberry Bush

Pepperberry detail

There is a bivouac spot under a rock beside the track that one could escape the rain if things got desperate ...

After arriving at the hut and having a snack we thought we might as well see if we could get to the top. The track has been rerouted to stop the erosion in the gully that the old route followed for quite some distance. The new route is quite convoluted but should not suffer the erosion problems that plagued the old route. One reason is that the new route involves quite a lot of rock scrambling, and at one point we were climbing up a mini-waterfall.

We did eventually manage to get to the top, but there wasn't a lot to see besides the hands in front of our faces. Di took an obligatory summit photo ...

... and we headed back down to find shelter and eat some lunch.

A seemingly interminable slog saw us eventually back at Lake Vera. It had drizzled and rained lightly pretty much all day but we're  not really complaining: at least some of the fires that have been burning in Tasmania's west might be snuffed out.

As luck would have it, the following day was much finer, and we strolled back to the roadhead without breaking out our wet weather gear. Glances from vantage points along the way showed that cloud still covered Frenchmans Cap, so we didn't get to see the peak at all in the three days we spent on the trail.

Not to worry. The last time Di and I were in at Frenchmans, we went in to climb and had brilliant weather. (Pete will just have to come back another time if he wants to have these views.) Di took this photo of me at the top after we'd done our route ...

Alas, that was thirty years ago, to the month. Now those were  the days!