After my sleepless night in White Cliffs, I really wasn’t in the mood to drive too far the following day. I was keeping an eye out for a free campsite at one of the nicer roadside stops along the highway eastward when I just happened to pop into a roadhouse for a coffee. Anyone advertising “Real Coffee” in the outback must actually know how to make it properly! I popped in and noticed they were offering cheap camping around back with nice shady places, hot showers, real coffee, and a staff of European backpackers. It couldn’t be all that bad!
I got a little restless in the afternoon and decided to ask them whether there were any 4WD tracks in the area I could mountain bike for a little while. They looked at me like I was a bit nuts, and it turned out I was. I noticed a national park nearby that borders the owner’s farm property and got permission to ride through to try to get into the park. Unfortunately, after only about 10-15 minutes of bike riding, I found myself with both tires flat due to double-Gs. Double-Gs are double thorns that will tear through any mountain bike tire. I very rarely get flats, but I had to spend the rest of the afternoon scrutinising my tyres to find all the tiny thorns and pick them out so they would not re-flat my new tubes. The experience made me very wary of riding off trails for a while!
Mountain Biking Adventure
Map of the route “Double-G Hell”: 3,814 m, 21 m of climbing and 19 m of descent, elevation between 76 m and 81 m, time 00:27:53. It is a loop that starts and ends at -31.65435, 144.26797 (latitude, longitude).
Today’s Drive
Map of the route “Double-G Hell”: 200,798 m, 562 m of climbing and 610 m of descent, elevation between 73 m and 208 m, time 21:41:46. It starts at -30.84963, 143.08878 and ends at -31.65432, 144.26791 (latitude, longitude).
