With a shorter distance to travel today (70kms) there wasnt the urgency of yesterday to get away so early - I didnt rouse until 7am. It was a pretty liesurely preparation which saw us leaving the Paradise Caravan Park just after 8:30am. Our destination for the day was Yackandanda via Beechworth.
We started out of town on the Murray to the Mountains Rail Trail which will take us all the way to Beechworth. The rail trail is paved rather than gravel which makes the going a bit easier, as does the wind behind us. Not as strong as yesterday but certainly better than heading into it. The first station on the rail trail was Everton (27kms) which was mostly flat to undulating with a nice down ward run to the station. At this point the rail trail split, one way going to Beechworth (us) and the other on to Bright. We intended to stop for a coffee here but with nothing immediately on offer we continued on our way.
The 15kms to Beechworth was much more like hard work. It was a continuous climb of 3% give or take. Nothing outrageous, but 15kms of uphill is still an
effort. We cruised into Beechworth just on 12pm, a perfect stop for lunch. Historical fact is that between 1852 and 1856 over 3,100,000 ozs of gold was lodged at Beechworth. Now at todays price of $2000/oz, thats worth a cool $6.2 Billion.
In 2009 I wrote my first cycling blog chronicling our adventure from Federation Square to Uluru. We made a number of friends on that trip and one of them was a young Fran Wellington, who at 19 was the youngest and only female rider on that trip. Nowadays Fran lives and works in Uppergundowering in the Kiewa Valley. Once we knew we were going to be in the area we contacted Fran and organised to catch up. And that was for lunch in Beechworth. 11 years on Fran still looks much the same as she did in 2009. We sat and talked about old times and new for about 90 minutes. Eventually it was time to leave, we needed to get on the road and Fran needed to get to the Feed Shop to get food for her 120 Chooks!
Since we had climbed getting into Beechworth it made sense we would descend on the other side, and descend we did for a good couple of kilometers enjoying the speed and effortless distance we were getting. We did eventually find a rail trail that looked very new and switched from the road to the trail only to actually cathcup to the workers who were still building it - back to the road we went.
The road undulated up and down until we hit the 5kms out of Yack, then it was all downhill from there. What a great way to finish the day gliding into town.
We still havent decided where we are going tomorrow which will be the discussion over dinner tonight but we aim to be in Wadonga the day after.
