Bike SA Annual Tour - Day 2

American River to Parndarna - 21st October 2013

Over night the promised rains came. Hearing the rain on the roof of the tent all night had me dubious about us taking on the unsealed option.

Morning came and we enjoyed a nice hot breakfast (baked beans, toast and sausages) courtesy of The Shed. It was here that Miss V and I had decided that we'd do the sealed road route today into the centre of Kangaroo Island.  We narrowly avoided a gold coin fine for not signing out, looping back to take care of that. phew..  ;)

Heading out of American River we stopped to take a couple of photos that we'd neglected to take on our way in yesterday, including a stop at a slightly off the route look out. I think knowing that there was a high likelihood for being rained on during the day there was a bit of urgency, so we tended to keep the speed up where we could. In truth, this section looked much like most highways around Australia with bushland on each side, road stretching out to the horizon. Much less traffic though, which meant that we could enjoy the scenery a bit.


Morning tea was located at the Airfield at Cygnet River where we caught up with Brett and Karen. A bit of a highlight was having a chat with Mary Safe, founder of the Amy Gillet Foundation. Initially we chatted about cyclocross, but then about Amy's Gran Fondo, Amy's ride and all things cycling related. Absolutely lovely person, who has taken up a great cause in light of tragic circumstances. I'd rate this as a highlight of the day.

After morning tea we rode for a bit with Brett and Karen before parting company. At the 40 km mark there was a steep (~15%) hill which was a bit of a test, especially with the weather starting to turn.  With about 15km to go the rain really took hold and it was a bit of race to get to the camp site before it got much worse.

Rolling into camp we staked out a spot and quickly started to put up the tent. It was raining, and we needed shelter as soon as possible. What we hadn't counted on was the granite bedrock which seemed to underlay the surface making it incredibly difficult to hammer the stakes in. The gusty winds making things even more difficult by trying to relocate our tent into the next field! In the end we got things to an acceptable standard, rewarding us with a nice dry shelter, out of the wind and the heavy rain.



Lunch was provided by the Parndana Sports Club, with a wide array of sandwiches, spring rolls and sausage rolls.  Coupled with a hot cup of coffee normal operation was restored to CLP. The rest of the afternoon was spend hiding from the heavy rain, catching up on blogging and generally taking it easy.

Parndana Sports Club maintained their high standard in their meals serving up a delicious pumpkin soup, super tender (and enormous!) chicken breast with vegetables and a pavlova for dessert.

Over dinner we were given the weather forecast for tomorrow, which called for pretty much the same as today, not that we really needed to hear that given that we could see the wild weather out the window while eating dinner, including a pretty impressive lightning display. We all anxiously moved back to our tents after dinner, perhaps a little concerned as to how bad the weather would be over night. Miss V and I packed up all our stuff, just in case our tent failed overnight and we needed to evacuate.

As we lay in bed we listened to the rain falling heavily while watching our tent sway we were both wondering whether we'd awake to a rain soaked tent, or whether we'd be one of the lucky ones that have come out of the night unscathed.

Strava data