F2-Day 4: Portland to Mount Gambier

Last night it blew a gale and at 5am it absolutely bucketed down. Wet roads normally means no roll for me - but on this tour, there is no choice! It was not looking good for a sunny day and it was abundantly clear that it was going to be another big headwind all day! Cold, windy and intermittent showers were on the menu. Oh well, 1 out of 7 ain't too bad...and it was only 108k so by this week's standards, short.

Now before we left, Mitchie had to right a small indiscretion from Geelong - so being brought up a good boy, he sent a card...

As we set off, it was actually sunny patches peeking through the clouds, but I was very glad of the rain vest, neck warmer, fleecy arm warmers and knee warmers. Oh, and you NEVER wear white socks on a day like this...unless you want grey ones afterwards.

I decided it was not a day for video but some arty (?) photos instead.

At the 45km mark, after only copping one 5-minute rain episode (but enough to make the bike filthy), we hit the halfway point from Melbourne to Adelaide, so it was appropriate to stop and take a photo to mark the occasion. It was literally in the middle of nowhere, among thousands of acres of pine plantations and a few small groups of emus.

The Official Half Way Point between Melbourne and Adelaide

Now the next stop was Nelson and it looked like the only thing there was a very bog ordinary servo. GT, Mitchie, AZed and I thought "C'MON - THERE MUST BE MORE" so we ducked down the only side street in town and managed to find a local who pointed us towards the Nelson Kiosk whereby we were assured that "they have the best coffee in town". 

To our absolute amazement, he was true to his word and the coffee was good. As an added bonus we scored the most delightful and delicious waffles nearly EVER! They were old school round ones and plump with fillings of a) ham, cheese and pineapple and b) roast beef and cheese. WINNING! And, we backed it up with a perfectly tasty bert & ernie (bacon and egg roll). 

Team Bravien had a fairly lengthy stop and so the rest of the group had rolled on and was in front. We powered the next 5k to the South Australian border for the obligatory tourist shot. And not long after we bumped into a couple of Korean tourists riding from Adelaide to Brisbane self supported, which of course is a brilliant opportunity for a selfie! Kudos to them! (Note Mitchie's location in the shot dear reader!)

And from there it was only 32 to Mount Gambier, and since we had gained half an hour at the border, we had plenty of time to fight the last of the head wind and arrive into town by 12.30pm. I really wanted to get some extra training in and to see some actually vertical metres so I did a few extras in the form of hill reps up and down to Blue Lake until the elevation gain said 1,000m. See the ride here.

Shari was good enough to drive us into town after a clean up for coffee, banana and berry smoothies (which were AWESOME), and I had a rather scrummy lemon tea cake with vanilla ice-cream. Gotta love long rides for eating whatever the hell you want!!

Tomorrow is a big 180k so it's an early night for all. Dinner was at the local RSL.

Thanks for reading and BE AWESOME: make a tax deductible donation to Future2 here!!