May 6 - Coffs to Strontian Park - 97 km

6.00 am Tony says "I'm bored". So much for sleeping in after a long day on the train. We got up, packed and made final adjustments to the bikes and were ready to go. 

I rang Andrew Lowe who was in town for family wedding and organised to meet him for breakfast. Sorry for waking you up Andrew!!  Headed downtown to the Blue Balloon cafe ordered coffee and waited for Andrew to arrive. It was good to catch up with Andrew, who would like to return to work, but just has too many other things on.  

Andrew was staying just near the Big Banana so he offered to take photos of our departure from there. We finished the previous leg is this journey there last year. After getting some items for lunch from the supermarket rode out of town to the Big Banana.  Met up with Andrew for a few pictures and we were off. 

The  hills coming out of Coffs weren't as big as we remembered them and we made very good time in sunny conditions. Joe bonked after 2 hours - no carbs in the big veggie breakfast. He had to stop just before the Dirty Creek Range to have a sesame bar for energy.  Tony bonked after  3 hours near Blackadder Rd, what a cunning plan? Seems the red wine and dark chocolate diet is not all its cracked up to be for endurance events.

Wanted to stop at Bald Knob Rd for a photo, but we were travelling well and didn't want to stop.  We stopped for lunch in lovely roadside rest stop and ate our  rolls

Arrived in South Grafton around 3.00 pm and went to the supermarket to buy dinner. Then into Maccas for a smoothie before setting out to find a campsite we had identified on the map. While we were working out how to get there Nicholas came along and offered to guide us to the campsite turn off. Lucky he did because we had no idea despite having a map. 


Nicholas was a fellow tourer and had done the part of the National trail in QLD on his MTB.  Thanks for the help Nicholas, you were great.


The campsite was a lot further out of town than we expected but well worth the extra kms. A beautiful spot beside the Clarence river which is a decent size river unlike the piddly streams we have in Victoria. There were a couple of groups of fisherman who seemed to catch some small fry but nothing decent while we were watching.


For dinner we had spaghetti marinara which was great but we missed having parmesan and would have enjoyed a red wine. 

Sunset comes quickly up here, but the moon was fantastic.  Finished off with an early night listening to the bats nesting in the Moreton Bay figs.






It is time to introduce you to the Ischial Tuberosity Rating (ITR).  The ITR is a measure of the amount of pain felt when you are sitting on a bicycle seat for long periods.   


I have taken a poll of all riders on this escapade and the ITR today was 6.


Marcus for your benefit because I know you are into models,   the ITR is directly proportional to the length of time in the saddle plus the hardness of the seat and inversely proportional to the amount of training put in before the ride.   I would explain this more, but you would need an advanced degree in economics to understand it.