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Day Twenty One : Port Augusta to Port Pirie

After our horrifying ride on a small section of the Eyre Highway yesterday afternoon, Richard asked us at dinner if any of us enjoyed it and wanted to do it again for another 100 km to get to Port Pirie the next Day. This section of the Eyre Highway is notoriously dangerous, three cyclists have been killed on this section of road in the last 6 weeks. Thirty thousand trucks and cars use this section of road each day. It is where the traffic from the Eastern States, Western Australia and the Northern Territory converge.

Richard suggested he load loads us all into the troopyand the wagon (obviously kicking out the imaginary crows supporters) and drive us to Willmington where we would have a scenic ride through the Flinders ranges to Laura, from there we would get back into the vehicles and he would drive us to Port Pire. The decision was unanimous as it is always safety first.

Well it was a good plan but didn’t quite go the way we would have liked. It was meant to be a half day ride, get to Port Pirie around 12.30pm have lunch and the rest of the day off.

We left a fine, mild and sunny Port Augusta and headed to the Flinders Rangers where it gradually got colder with increasing cloud cover. We arrived to a very wet and windy Wilmington, with the Flinders Rangers engulfed in cloud, so much for the scenic ride. It was cold wet and windy, the only rain we had for the whole trip.

Not only did it rain for 4 hours we struck road works where we had to ride on a muddy dirt road for 20km, this is more suited for mountain bikes and not expensive road bikes. The riding was slow as our bikes sank into the mud and were absolutely filthy by the time we got to Laura. Glen who always arrives way ahead of us found a tap with a hose on it where we washed the surface dirt off the bikes before we loaded the up on the vehicles.

The rain had stopped at this stage and the clouds had lifted but we had gone past the scenic part of the ride.

We got to Port Pirie for a late lunch at 2.30pm then spent the afternoon washing our bikes.

We stayed at the Ellen Hotel a very luxurious modern Hotel, what a contrast from a few days ago when we were in the middle of nowhere.