A few weeks ago I went with Span on a cycling trip from Macquarie to Kiama.
This is a great trip, you catch the train to Macquarie for the start then ride through beautiful rolling hills to the Robertson Hotel for the night. Actually those hills tended to roll far more up than down, but it meant dinner was really appreciated!
Robertson Hotel has a pretty good menu, particularly made up of local beef, being in Bega hinterland area. The menu outside beef, lamb or pork was a little limited – so it is lucky they were all nice! After a night of way too much red wine, and a terrible local vocalist / guitarist it was time to crash.
A lot of the fun of staying in smaller pubs is the people you meet, in this case it was a couple of shearers just in for the day, to do the local “town sheep”. Interesting that this sort of wandering life still exists.
The next day back on the bike, hills, hills, even more hills, and to make up for all the climbing some of the best downhill runs I’ve ever done!
As I approached the last hill, bang!…. broken chain… and I hadn’t brought a temporary link. After lots of cursing and wish I had a Leatherman with me, I managed to squeeze the chain back together – hopefully enough. Back on the bike, all seemed good, another 100 m then an even bigger bang; with a sinking feeling I looked down, there was no way this was being hacked together – my derailier was no longer attached to the bike!
So after running up the, thankfully, the last hill; I coasted, standing on one peddle at 50km/hr into Kiama 🙂
Finally a quick lunch and on the train back to Sydney, pushing my poor injured steed all the way.