Cycle Against the Beast – 2017
Day 8 – 27th May, 2017
Today, it was back on the bike! Today’s intended destination was Wagga Wagga, just over 80 km away. After grabbing a bacon and egg muffin, from Hungry Jack’s, I hopped on the bike at about 07:45 – slightly later than I’d planned.
The going was quite good, and I it wasn’t too long before I reached the Old Hume Highway turnoff. It’s goodbye to the Hume Highway for the next few days.
It didn’t take too long to feel like I was in the middle of nowhere. But that’s ok. It was nice, and quiet, with very little traffic on the road. At one point, I didn’t see another car for about half an hour.
One thing I’d been looking forward to, today, was crossing the Murrumbidgee River, one of Australia’s major rivers. This was reached after 30 km of riding.
It had been pretty flat for much of the morning. However, it didn’t take too long for the steep parts to appear. Definitely a challenge. I’m not the fittest person in the world, so uphills do take it out of me a bit. 🙂 But, today, what goes up, must go down. It was nice to coast for a few kilometres. And that brought me to Wantabadgery fairly quickly. In fact, today’s progress was very good. I didn’t expect to arrive for another hour or more.
Wantabadgery is definitely a one horse town. Not much there at all. However, I stopped at the General Store and bought a bottle of Lift, which expired a couple of years ago – however, I think it tasted even better (though, it had lost some of its fizziness). One interesting thing about the door, at the General Store, is that when you open it, it triggers a burglar alarm. I guess it’s to alert the owner, if he happens to be outside somewhere.
On the way in to Wagga Wagga, I passed under the Main South Line. This is the main railway line between Sydney and Melbourne. While taking a few photographs of the viaduct, I found that my arrival here also coincided with the XPT service from Melbourne to Sydney. As a railfan, the below photographs are definitely not my best railway photographs!
My arrival in to Wagga Wagga was a couple of hours earlier than I’d estimated. Can’t complain about that! Tomorrow, it’s on to Culcairn.
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