Grand plans to tour overseas ‘every second year’ met with a reality check – as did a Plan B of a 10-day ‘Northern Rivers’ tour – heading out from, and returning home.

So Plan C it is.  As much as we need to get some more done on the never-ending renovations, we felt we needed to mark our 30th wedding anniversary with some tandem action.

So we’re doing a three-day loop, heading up into the Coffs hinterland to Lowanna, along Eastern Dorrigo Way, through Dorrigo down to Bello (ie. Bellingen), and then back home. No days used up in getting to/from start/end points.

This is the plan:

While Day 1 is all roads we’ve ridden before, the raison d’être for the trip is to ride Eastern Dorrigo Way to Dorrigo, and some other back roads either side of Bellingen.

We’ve ridden up to Ulong before, but only from Coramba, so doing it from home is part of the challenge. (As will be lugging panniers up that bloody hill!)  I’ve ended up booking a B&B at Lowanna, so already there’s a variation to the initial plan.  There may be more yet. It’s all about exploring our own backyard. (And maybe even taking a twenty kilometre detour to avoid the steep ‘Quarry Hill’ on Bucca Road!)

Marc switched the tyres back to the Marathon Plus-es today. (And discovered one was buggered, so hopefully, we can get an express delivery of a new one this week.)

And I got my lovely friend Di, who is a sewing guru, to repair a hole in my bike nix seam that I’ve been putting off doing because I haven’t got my act together with sewing machines.

Leaving Saturday.