On a long ride such as this - over 600 km - it’s rare to get nearly perfect riding conditions for the whole journey, but today was such a day. Cool, partly cloudy and nearly windless, with just a few very light spots of rain in the afternoon and light traffic throughout.
The first part of the ride was on highways to Jugiong for coffee, where the familiar Long Track Pantry had, surprisingly, not many customers and plenty of spare tables. From here we continued to Tumut for fuel. This part of the ride at this time of the year usually has vistas of yellow canola and purple Salvation Jane; this year all the fields were a relentless bright green from all the rain that’s fallen.
Continuing south from Tumut to Tumbarumba, the condition of the roads - like so many secondary roads now - has deteriorated, and dodging potholes kept us focussed. I hit one in a particularly bad area, but no damage was done and it seems that the other riders all got through the day unscathed. The Tumbarumba Pub is a typical country pub and the food is about what you’d expect. They do a Parmi Challenge; three parmis on the one plate for $48, but if you can scoff them in 20 minutes, they’re on the house! Sadly, none of our riders was up to the challenge.
The next part of the journey is the raison d’être for this ride. Between Khancoban and Thredbo is around 75 km of continuous bends, climbing to around 1580 m in altitude. This section is all eucalypt forest, part of which was severely burned in late 2019; mostly this is regenerating well and this area, too, was very green. The road is in top condition, the weather was glorious, and we didn’t see any wildlife on the road, so it was a magnificent ride. A quick stop was made at Scammell’s Spur Lookout; the view here is to the range around Mt Kosciuszko, and there was still plenty of snow along the ridge.
With such a long day, we made a coffee stop in the afternoon at Lake Crackenback where it was really very pleasant sitting chatting in the sunshine. The last stop was for fuel in Jindabyne, then we had the rather familiar and boring ride home on Kosciuszko Road and the Monaro Highway.
The riders for the day were:
- Steven Bardwell - Moto Guzzi V85TT
- Bill Henshaw - Triumph Tiger 1200 XCA
- Hartmut Kehm - BMW R1250GS
- Shelbie McDonald - Kawasaki Z650
- Kevin Sherman - BMW R1250RS
- Scott England - R1250RT Ride Leader and author
