Cycle Against the Beast – 2017
Day 12 – 31st May, 2017
Today’s ride was to be a relatively short one – only about 56 km. After a breakfast of bacon and eggs, I set off at 09:45 with a temperature of about 6 degrees. The wonderful thing, about Albury, is that all the streets are set out as a grid – at least, in the centre. There were pretty much two routes I could choose from. Either remain on the NSW side of the border, and take the B58 Riverina Highway. Or cross the border, into Victoria, and take some back roads (after about 5km on the M31 Hume Highway). I chose the latter, partly because it would parallel the railway line for some of the way. 🙂
As the Murray River belongs to New South Wales, one doesn’t cross into Victoria until fully crossing it. Before the M31 motorway bypassed Albury/Wodonga, the above bridge was the main way of crossing the border. The motorway started another couple of kilometres down the road. The entrance is still there, of course, and it’s the one that I took.
Today’s motorway cycling was only to be about 5 km, before turning off to join the back roads. It also involved a level crossing. 🙂
Sure enough, after only about 15 minutes, something came along.
The N class locomotive was built by Clyde Engineering, back in the mid-90s, and is EMD (Electro-Motive Diesel) based – model number JT22HC-2. All members of this class were originally built to operate on the Victorian broad gauge (1600mm) rail network. Following the standardisation of the line to Albury, several members of the class were converted. N457, pictured above, is the first member of its class to be painted in the new purple/yellow PTV livery.
With the photo being taken, I hopped on the bike again. Not much traffic on the road, which made things nice and quiet. I was making really good progress, too.
Not long after reaching the halfway point of the day, the headwind started picking up again. I didn’t mind it, this time, as it gave a bit of a welcome challenge. The day’s elevation gain was quite small, so it gave me something to fight.
After a bit of a dip down into Victoria, it was time to cross the Murray, into NSW, for Corowa. Corowa is where I will be spending the next couple of days.
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