Jen's Mystery Ride 2012

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What a fantastic day for a Saturday ride – I couldn’t have asked for better weather or better company.

BP St Mary’s was the starting point, with 23 bikes, riders and a couple of pillions leaving the service station at 10am. A couple of us had some sort of viral thing happening, so we thought it would be great to share with you all  Seriously, I hope none of you ended up unwell after coming into contact with the ‘sickies’.

 

I was going to try and get you all across Marion Road so that we could go down toward Daws Rd, but it was a Saturday morning and the road was quite busy (what had I been thinking when I came up with that rash idea??). Eventually I figured out how to get to Daws Road by going up Marion Road, instead of down (well, the brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders that day). We eventually wound our way up Belair Road, down Sheoak Road past the Belair National Park, through Upper Sturt and Iron Bank and through Cherry Gardens. We then came across some road works – which hadn’t been there during the pre-run, and waited for tail end Charlie to catch up (as one of the riders thought that people had become lost). All good, so we set off again and wound our way through Clarendon, Bakers Gully, and onto the Kangarilla Road. We then turned onto Peters Creek Road and onto the road that leads through Kuitpo Forest and eventually made our way to Willunga.

Unbeknown to me, the market was on, so finding a park proved a little difficult. As it was only meant to be a quick comfort stop, as lunch was about ¾ of an hour away, we only stayed there for 15 minutes and waited for tail end Charlie to catch up. We wound our way through the back of Willunga and headed toward South Road. Up Sellicks Hill and turned at Hindmarsh Valley Road, just before Myponga.

We then went down Hindmarsh Tiers, past the Hindmarsh waterfalls and onto the Victor Harbor Road. We then turned down Waterport Road and through the back streets to Port Elliot, where we stopped for lunch. As luck would have it, there was plenty of parking space out the front of the Pt Elliot pub, so some of us had lunch there and others went to the bakery across the road. A couple of riders left the ride after lunch and the rest of us continued on the Victor Harbor - Goolwa Road, turned up Flagstaff Hill Road, went around past the airport, onto the Strath-Goolwa Road, up the Mt Compass-Goolwa Road and into Mt Compass. Those who needed petrol filled up at Mt Compass and then we set off down Nangkita Road, left onto Bull Creek Road (where most of us got held up by Sunday drivers who were out for a drive on a Saturday).

We headed through Meadows, where a few more riders headed off their own way, went toward McLaren Vale, down Tatachilla Road, toward Maslins Beach, turned right onto Commercial Road and then went to Pt Noarlunga for coffee at the bakery. The ride was about 250k and those of us who stayed to the end had a few laughs with our coffee. Only one small mishap on the ride – but we won’t talk about that; no harm done to any of the riders.

Thanks to those of you who came along and made the most of some good riding weather.
Jen (HER990)