Pedal Cure 4 FightMND – 2020
11th March, 2020
I checked out at 06:45 and headed back to the footy club to meet up with Hannah and the rest of the guys. We started rolling at dawn. Despite Albury being a busy city, at this time of morning it was very quiet. We did encounter a bit of busy traffic as we crossed the Murray River from Albury, New South Wales into Wodonga, Victoria. Crossing under the motorway, we then passed through the city centre of Wodonga and on to the less busy roads. Throughout the Pedal Cure 4 FightMND road, the route had been plotted to ensure that we keep away from busy roads. Of course, this wasn’t always possible.
30 km into the day, Hannah and I had our first roadblock. A bridge was blocked off due to some kind of engineering works, and we were not allowed to pass over it. The bridge looked totally fine, but we were still not permitted to cross it. Instead, we had to take the older river crossing, just next to it, which had a road in very poor condition. Once the obstacle was passed, we arrived at the small town of Chiltern. This was our first break of the day. We had beaten everyone there! They arrived about 20 minutes later. Not long after they arrived, we set off again. But we (I) took the wrong road out of town. After realising I’d misread the route, we turned around and headed back on course.
The lunch stop was in the rural city of Wangaratta. To get into and out of Wangaratta, we had to negotiate a busy 12 km road. As it’s always the way with busy roads in city areas, there were a few shouts of abuse from some drivers and some very close passes. Thankfully, we took the turnoff that would take us through Glenrowan and on to Benalla. I last visited Glenrowan back in 2017, when I did my first ride for FightMND. Glenrowan is the site of Ned Kelly’s last stand. We made a quick stop for a cold drink. Coming into Benalla, one of the support vehicles come out to guide us to the night’s stop at one of the football/netball clubs. There was no function this evening, but the football and netball club put on food for us. Tomorrow, a decent amount of gravel road is on the agenda!
Header photo grabbed from a photo on Pedal Cure's Facebook page.
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