Sunday 17th April, 2022

92.6km, +194m
Moving 3:15, Elapsed 3:58
Max 43.8, Avg 28.4

Message to my sister yesterday: So so tired, just got to do one more day and I can have a day off

We got away at about 6.45. I have no memory of what we had with us for breakfast-y food. We stopped only 9km along at Salt Creek. Pity about it being about 3 hours too early for that coffee van! (I’d had that option noted in the spreadsheet from my pre-ride google map ‘coffee’ research!) We stopped briefly outside the former roadhouse, had a snack, topped up the water, and then kept going.

We hummed along with a nice little tailwind. Perfect tandem road and conditions! Not much traffic. We had another couple of short breaks in rest stops…

… and rocked into the outskirts of Kingston (actually Rosetown – just past The Big Lobster) around 10.45. Well, that 90km didn’t take long! What a difference a tailwind makes. We could feel the wind turning as we arrived, so lucky we didn’t have that sleep-in I was wishing for. Looks like I was getting 1.5 rest days! It did feel a bit silly to be stopping so early in the day – in hindsight you wonder if maybe we could have continued to Robe? But we’d had to lock in the Easter weekend accommodation back a week and a half ago. And the wind was swinging around to a headwind now anyway. (And the traffic seemed to be building up.)

Kingston it was – the rest day I didn’t get in Adelaide! I was also glad we weren’t going to be riding on tomorrow on Easter Monday.

Eating that elephant, one bite at a time.

Kingston is actually, more correctly, Kingston SE, (and you can read the wikipedia link there for the reason why!)

Karen – yet another fabulous Dotwatcher – was waiting by the side of the road to welcome us. We chatted for a while, and she reluctantly agreed to a photo! This was where Danny had pulled out with his Shermer’s neck problem becoming beyond dangerous, and Karen had helped him with logistics for getting back to Adelaide. She had also greeted many of the other riders as they rolled into town

That’s actually the motel we’d booked up there behind us. Their reception was un-manned (un-personed?)… with a touch-screen check-in, so the personal approach of trying our luck at an early check-in wasn’t feasible.

We rolled across the road to a bakery and spent a while there having brunch/lunch. More than one coffee may well have been consumed by the coffee drinker. The food was pretty good (so we resolved to go back over there tomorrow to get some snacks for the following day’s riding.)

We went for a ride to check out the township proper- sat in the park for about half an hour killing time – and then rode back up to the motel. Somehow we did manage to get an early 1pm check-in.

I got washing on in the motel laundry. Rest time.

We walked downtown for dinner at the Crown Inn Hotel. The dining areas were packed. Easter/school holiday packed. And excruciatingly noisy. I was still pretty paranoid about covid, so eating here was altogether not enjoyable – couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Oh well, at least Kingston SE likes to think of itself as cycling-friendly.

We would see what else it had to offer tomorrow. Rest day, ahhhhhhh!