Wisemans Ferry

Perfect weather and easy drive for a one and a half day adventure.  Left JDs at 7:00am and were at Wisemans Ferry and ready to ride by 8:20am.  Eight in the crew on Saturday - Yarro, JD, JohnO, Paul, Greg, Ashley, Peter and Phil.  Nice start with an easy climb up the Old Great North Road.  Stop for a snack and drink as it started to heat up.  One hour 15 to this point - 12kms - and going well.  A stop for lunch just after Yarro and Phil had punctures and questions were being asked about enough water.  Fortunately we came across a creek with clear water about 4 hours in but only 40kms in too.  We still had between 35 and 45kms to go.  At 50kms legs were hurting and energy dwindling as we fuelled up again.  At about 55kms we hit the top of the downhill we rode up on the 50kms Dirtworks.  All good.  A 1.5k downhill to the flat road back to Wisemans Ferry.  75kms round trip all done by 5:00pm.  A fantastic 9 hours on the bike - well - except for the sore legs and butts.  Sadly Paul had to head home leaving 7 to stay over.

Checked into the Wisemans Ferry with some warm up beers before dinner in the pub.  Steaks for most of us and more drinks before an early night.  Lights out at 9:30 which was 10:30 'cause of daylight savings. 

Sunday Graham joined us for 8:00am full breakfast.  It hit the spot and with the revised plan of a reverse of the usual night ride we felt we'd have no problem getting back to leave by about 1:00pm.  We "thought" we'd get about a 15k downhill from the same place we'd had our first stop Saturday.  Sadly the night ride had tricked us.  It was more like a 15k "up and down" ride with a short 1.5k steep downhill.  It was fine although Graham had really hoped for a big downhill.  Graham got the chance on the way up to the T-junction to revisit where he cracked his hip about 12 months ago.  We didn't get back 'til about 2:00pm and with a quick bite to eat at the cafe by the ferry we headed back to Sydney.