Camperdown Ride 10 March 2021

Ride Leader, ride report and pics by Peter Townsend
  
Seventeen Ulysseans gathered in Maccas car park to participate in our 2^nd organised mid week ride for the year – 16 bikes and Peter on his Spyder. Also, well done to Phil and Peter who rode in from Colac to join us.



Weather looked pretty promising, high cloud cover to start with, slight southerly breeze, no rain and a promise of sunshine later in the day. So after the customary ride briefing and happy snaps we headed west onto the highway in search of Deans Marsh, our coffee stop, with ‘Gentle” volunteering to keep us all together. We turned onto the highway, travelled a whole 100 metres and came to a grinding halt – both sides of the Highway had been reduced to one lane only, with the R/H lanes closed off. There were cars and trucks and a cherry picker – all with flashing lights and things beeping, lots of hi-viz vests and hard hats, traffic management people and important looking people milling around - and the reason for all this chaos and activity – they were replacing a light bulb in one of the sets of traffic lights!!? Strangely, the whole scenario reminded me of that old joke that involves a light bulb and 100 Irishmen! Gotta laugh!! Anyway, after negotiating all this chaos, we regrouped at the start of Waurn Ponds Drive and then continued on our merry way.

We made our way to Deans Marsh via Ceres, Gnarwarre, and then on to the Cape Otway Rd with a short burst up the Princes Highway and then onto Buckley Rd South. On Buckley Rd there were sheep and lambs grazing in paddocks on either side of the road and at one point I had to find the anchors fairly quickly as a lamb had squeezed through a hole in the wire fence and was happily grazing in the long paddock. On seeing me, it fortunately decided to head rapidly back to mum who was on the right side of the fence. Sheep never cease to amaze me – not only are they startled every morning by the sun rising – quite often if they are standing in a paddock that is lush with grass they will happily stick their heads through a wire fence, almost garrotting themselves in the process, to strain and reach for that one blade of succulent grass that is not quite within their reach!! However, this is not necessarily an ovine trait as I know a few people who firmly believe – “the grass is always greener”!!











 
A pleasant stop was enjoyed at Deans Marsh and we then regrouped and headed off to our lunch destination – our number reduced to 15 as a couple of riders headed homeward bound after coffee. (I suspect they thought this Wednesday was one of our informal coffee rides!) We made our way to Colac via Deepdene Rd., Colac/Lorne Rd and Colac/Forrest Rd. Then muddling through Colac we found the Colac/Lavers Hill Rd. One of the roads I was intending to use in Colac was unfortunately closed due to roadworks, and of course one of the waypoints I had locked into my SatNav was on this road. Now, those of you familiar with SatNavs will understand that if you miss a waypoint, the device will, regardless of where you might be on the planet, constantly give you directions back to that waypoint! So, to make life interesting for me, my SatNav was now giving me 2 sets of instructions – One - to get back to the missed waypoint and Two - to get to the planned destination – your job, if you choose to accept it, is to work out which is which!!? (I’m sure there is probably a way of editing the route on the run to remove the missed waypoint, however, I am NOT that clever!) Anyway, we pressed on rewardless and found G Barrys Rd which took us onto the Irrewillipe Rd which we followed to the Simpson Speedway where we turned right. Then we headed north through Carpendeit, Koallah, past Lake Purrumbete and onto the Cobden/Camperdown Rd and on into Camperdown, where we refuelled before making our way to the Commercial Hotel, our lunch destination. Also, by the time we arrived in Camperdown we had perfectly blue, clear skies and some of us were now slightly overdressed.

 
Jimbo rode down from Portland to join us for lunch, which was pretty impressive as he would have had a slightly longer trip than us! Lunch was relaxed and most enjoyable with Donna and her staff looking after us with their hospitality and efficiency. They have a good selection of $15 pub meals and it’s certainly a venue I’d use.






After lunch, Bob, who had fitted one pannier to “Goldilocks” for today’s ride, discovered that the pannier had been rubbing on the rear tyre all the way here and he now had a rather large hole in the pannier. Apparently, in his zeal to customise ‘Goldilocks’ to the point where she is pretty well unidentifiable as a BMW R1100S, he had discarded the odd important bracket –in this case one that secured the panniers, and hence his current dilemma! Anyway, lots of things can be said about Ulysseans and one of them is that we are a resourceful lot - Greg reached into his mobile “Alladins Cave” and pulled out a seemingly endless supply of Ockie straps and webbing and him and Bob soon had the holey pannier secured and trussed up like a Xmas turkey!

After lunch Jimbo parted company and headed down the Cobden Rd in the vague direction of Portland and the 2 Colacites also made their own way home, so the remaining 13 of us headed off on the last leg of the ride. We travelled north east up through Foxhow and then threaded our way down to Cundare North finding the northern end of the Corangamite Lake Rd, which brought us out on the Colac/Cressy Rd.  Just before Beeac we turned left onto the Eurack road and basically followed this all the way to Winchelsea where the ride ended, near Café La Hoot and the public toilets. In summary most of us would have clocked up around 320Klms for the day – a variety of roads from bituminised goat tracks to the odd bit of highway and everything in-between!(No dirt but!)  As usual, good company, good food, good weather, good day out! I was suitably impressed to learn that I had found a road that “Iron Bottom” Mark (“I’ve been everywhere man”!) had never been on before (somewhere near Koallah, I believe). I understand that the roller coaster ride at Luna Park was modelled on this particular road!

So, thanks to all for coming along and making for an extremely enjoyable day’s riding and thankyou Ron for your diligent TEC duties.

Peter t.

Thanks to you Peter for an excellent ride.
The lunch at the pub was very nice and it's a relaxed venue.
It was a great run home around the Lake Corangamite region - quite swift if I remember...