Tuesday 22nd March 2022

67.8km, +292m,
3:35 moving,
avg 18.9 km/h, max 33.9

Riding through onto the traditional lands of the Gubrun/Kubrun/Kaprun) people. (Kaalamaya was the language of the Kaprun people, who were driven away from their lands.)

We left at 5.20am. While it was only a short hop to Southern Cross, we still wanted to hopefully get most of it done before the forecast wind got worse.  

Strava note: Cold headwind. Bum isn’t doing very well.

We rolled into Southern Cross at about 10am, and spent two hours in a cafe – sorry ‘coffee lounge’!… Yilgarn Coffee Lounge – first having morning tea, and then lunch. I rang the motel to ask if there was any chance of checking in early (they said they’d ring us), and then we headed to the pool to kill some more time and get some hydrotherapy.  It was an amazing complex for a small town, and after 3 women (doing an exercise class) left, we had the place to ourselves.

After about 45 minutes we got the message that the room was ready so we headed to the motel and checked in around 1.00pm, and did some washing. We basically stuffed around till we had an extremely early dinner at the servo/roadhouse, then bought supplies at Foodworks, rolled back to the motel, and then went to bed at something like 6pm. Alarm set for around midnight.

Marc: I spent a good deal of the afternoon watching the dots of Scotty and Leroy moving towards Coolgardie. It was quite obvious that they were struggling with Leroy’s knees – he’d sought treatment in Southern Cross the previous day for swelling. It was a big challenge for them to do the section to Coolgardie with no services at all after Yellowdine @ 30+ kms and the unknown quantity of the injury. Setting off at 0400 they finally did make it into Coolgardie at about 2000 after many stops so it was no surprise to me that that was it for Leroy’s ride.