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Mid week ride to Timboon 15 January 2020

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Mid week ride to Timboon 15 January 2020 Empty Mid week ride to Timboon 15 January 2020

Post by Jules Pearce Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:37 am

Report: Peter Townsend 
Pics: Graham Aitken & Jules Pearce

Twenty-six Ulysseans fronted up at the Waurn Ponds Maccas car park to participate in this, the first organised ride for 2020. We had 24 bikes, 2 Can Ams, 2 women riders, 4 Phils and, disappointingly, only 3 Peters! Weatherwise, it was a day filled with the promise of hot northerly winds, not much sunshine, reduced visibility with lots of smoke haze and, later in the day, some thunderstorm and heavy rain ahead of a cool southerly change – typical southern Victorian summer’s day, really! It was good to see Mark on the big Tenere thing join us for the 1st leg of our ride, sporting his shiny new knees! Ride leader Jules gave a briefing on the intended plan of attack for the day, switched his Sat Nav to “Avoid Rain” mode, and with Phil R on the Spyder volunteering for TEC duty we headed out into the murk onto South Valley road to see what havoc we could wreak.


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The "Peters' were surpassed by 'Phils' for this ride. I can count four Phillips in this pic at the pre-ride briefing.


So, it was out through Highton and Ceres following the Barrabool Rd, crossing the Princes Hwy and continuing on to the Cape Otway Rd where we turned right and then on into Birregurra, our morning coffee stop. Riding conditions were fairly calm and pleasant with a northerly breeze starting to ramp up the temperature. After our usual convivial coffee break we said goodbye to 5 of our group (whom, for a variety of reasons needed to head homewards) and the remaining 21 of us reformed our conga line and meandered out of town towards the Princes Hwy where we turned left towards Colac.

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Birregurra General Store

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A short burst up the Hwy brought us to Trasks Rd where we turned left, eventually finding the Colac-Lavers Hill Rd via Colac-Forrest Rd, Old Yeo Rd, Bushbys Rd and Barongarook Rd. We turned left onto the Colac-Lavers Hill Rd and then right onto G Barrys Rd which brought us to the Irrewillipe Rd where we turned left. Irrewillipe had obviously had some serious rain dropped on it minutes before we rode through as the roads were extremely wet with large puddles of water lying around – however, not a drop landed on our heads! Good news Jules, your Sat Nav works!! Continuing on brought us to the Lavers Hill-Cobden Rd where we turned left and into Simpson. At Simpson we turned right into Williams Rd which runs into the Timboon-Colac Rd where we turned left and on into Timboon. As we rode towards Timboon the temperature took a serious nosedive and we went from 30 plus degrees to around 20 degrees – 1 minute you’re overdressed, next minute underdressed – Ah, ya gotta love our climate!
 
 So, parking in the main street shopping area the majority of us descended on the local bakery – which has great food at reasonable prices (we’ve been there a few times now). Fortunately, Timboon isn’t on the radar for most tourists who visit the Otways so the town is not overrun with visitors – just Ulysseans!  Unfortunately, Bob (Triumph Trophy? from Meredith) scored a puncture in his rear tyre just before Timboon – probably on roadworks just out of town that we passed through. Luckily Timboon has a motorcycle workshop so he left the bike there for repair. However, it was going to eat up a couple of hours so Jimbo decided to stay with him and they would make their own way home.  Phil and Tanya from Colac also left the ride at Timboon to head home. After wining and dining the rest of us (17) made our way to the petrol station to refuel and regroup before heading vaguely homeward.
 

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Lunch stop: Graeme and Jules at Timboon


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Phil & Bob attending to a punctured rear tyre on Bob's Triumph.

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Phil Long on his immaculate 1970's Triumph Trident.

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More Phils!


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Peter T

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Phil and Geoff 


We headed south out of Timboon heading towards Port Campbell and then cut across back to Simpson via the Cooriemungle Rd and the Princetown Rd. Shortly after leaving Timboon we ran back into the northerly breeze and the 30 degree plus temperature that the rest of the state was enjoying! Go figure!! We turned right at Simpson and made our way to Carlisle River via the Lavers Hill-Cobden Rd, Gellibrand River Rd and Carlisle Rd. It was on the Gellibrand River road where we ran out of bitumen and found a few kays of dirt to play in. Strangely, this wasn’t mentioned at the ride briefing – I think Jules was hoping nobody would notice the change in road surface?! To add to our surprise, we also encountered a group of cow beasties grazing along the side of the dirt road – they obviously didn’t know we were coming cos they looked as surprised to see us as we were to see them!! Fortunately they decided we were pretty harmless and watched us wobble off into the distance. Also, fortunately Jimbo wasn’t with us as his mobile box of firecrackers might have given some of our bovine friends cause for alarm! -- For some unknown reason, bovines seem to be attracted to HDs (just ask Mac if you doubt me!) 


We continued on the Carlisle Rd till we found the Irrewillipe Rd where we turned right and basically backtracked this mornings route back to Birregurra – albeit with a scenic detour of the backblocks of Colac. At Birregurra we had a break to stretch legs, shake hands with the unemployed etc before heading off to finish the ride at Moriac, via the Cape Otway road. Puzzlingly 14 people ended the ride at Moriac, and yet I thought we left Timboon with 17 riders?!! The good news is I’m not very good at counting – The bad news may be we still have 3 people wandering around the Otways trying to find their way home!! 

 
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Thursday's Addy: paragraph 3 "The fire broke out near the Carlilse River just after 2.30pm......."
Bloody good thing that we went through at 1.30pm!

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Final stop at Birregurra on the way home.

Well done Jules for planning and leading an excellent days ride –amazingly we stayed dry, the roads travelled were good motorcycling roads with little traffic and from my point of view there were quite a few new and interesting roads traversed. All up around 350 Klms traveled and thanks to Phil for keeping us all together (with the possible exception of 3 missing riders?!!)



PS – About 2 Klm from home the temperature again plummeted and serious rain started to fall out of the sky onto me – Oh great I thought, I’m going to arrive home looking like a drowned rat! – 30 seconds later the rain stopped!! It then had a 2nd go at me as I wheeled the bike under the carport at home – it always feels good to be one step ahead of the Rain Gods!
Jules Pearce
Jules Pearce


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Post by Graeme Beardwood Sun Jan 19, 2020 5:37 pm

Well Jules you have set the benchmark for the 2020 rides - and it is high!

Wednesday was a great ride; terrific roads; excellent corner marking; and a really good group with great camaraderie. 

We were fortunate with the weather and we were only 5 kms from home when the heavens opened up for Mal and myself.

Graeme Beardwood
Graeme Beardwood
Graeme Beardwood


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Post by Mark Nicoll Tue Feb 18, 2020 10:30 am

I'm glad I could join the group at least for part of the ride to Birregurra.
First group outing back on the bike and the new knees did okay  Wink
Mark Nicoll
Mark Nicoll


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