Mountains then motorways, with socialising and sourdough in between.
Leaving Thredbo, we descended the mountains towards Jindabyne. It was a perfect day, a mild start but bright sunshine and dry roads. We wound our way along the excellent road out of Thredbo and followed the Thredbo River valley before descending towards Jindabyne with its lake glistening bright blue in the morning sunshine, quite the contrast to the dry, sandy coloured hills that surround it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to take a pic so you’ll just have to take my word for it being lovely.
The route was the reverse of our first day but, this time, we dropped in on an old friend in Cooma, another Joanne from the UK, there are a few of us (I know another one through diving!).
I hadn’t seen Jo for a while so we spent a bit of time catching up and left with great coffee in our bellies and a loaf of her wonderful chilli and honey sourdough stuffed in the top box. Awesome to catch up!
We then rode back along the Monaro Highway, spotting the remains of the grassfire we had passed on day one. Jo told me that they had eventually closed the road, due to smoke, so we had been lucky to get through; we could see the scorched grass right next to the road, as we passed, incredible to think such an unassuming fire could have such power.
We also spent quite a bit of time being hit by large flying insects, it was difficult to tell exactly what they were at 100kph but an examination of our radiators revelealed that these were some sort of locust. We saw plenty of other riders out wearing just tshirts and shorts, I can’t imagine how hitting those creatures would feel on bare skin because even on our proper riding gear, these things hurt and left a lot of debris as a reminder of their sudden death.
Down past Canberra, a quick stop for fuel, and a wetting of my tshirt to help manage the climbing temperatures, and onwards towards Lake George. This time we stopped at a lookout, which was elevated, so we had a great view of the lake which seemed to be about half full, by area, of water.
We pretty much smashed out the rest of the journey home, a brief stop at a service station (ok, ok, it was MacDonalds!) for aircon and a cold drink to deal with the high temperatures as we hit 37 degrees at one point.
Arriving home, we had covered 1,686 km, another epic trip and a new destination we want to explore more of. Now to cleaning our riding gear of locust guts…..
Lady on Motorbike 