A motorcycle ride to Wallacia

O ye of little faith. They say that discretion is the better part of valour. Today those who exercised discretion rode home in the traffic, and those who demonstrated their valour had a great day riding in the countryside. Here is what went down.

Nine riders met at Maccas at Heathcote well in advance of the advertised start time of 10 AM. We gathered that the rostered ride leader might not be able to make it today, and so we started to discuss options. For some reason some folks were nervous about the weather, and that came into the discussion.

The general consensus was that a storm was coming up from the south, so it would be better if we didn’t go south to Kiama as advertised, but head a bit west and maybe skirt around the front of the storm running home ahead of it. Several riders consulted their respective electronic weather gurus, all coming up with different projections of what might happen, but it was fair to say that there was an air of pessimism about the weather. All they needed to do was look at the sky and have a little faith, and they would have seen that all would be well.

Anyway, it was ultimately decided that we would head down through the National Park from Waterfall, then back up to the Princes Highway through Helensburgh, head south till we got to Appin Way and then ride across to Picton. The deal was the Frosty would lead this section, and then Rocket would take over the lead from Picton through some interesting country leading back home because he was more familiar with that area.

Out to the bikes, helmets on, and all of a sudden the “3 Amigos” from the North Shore decided that the weather really was foreboding, and decided to head back home. Rocket decided to join them, and then there was only five of us for the tour.

The road through the National Park was a bit damp but underpopulated so we could get along at a reasonable clip. We turned right onto Appin Way and made our way through Appin and then across to Picton via the beautiful deep gorge on Wilton Road.  We had morning coffee at Picton, and to be fair to the sceptics, it did rain there. By the time we got out from Coffee, there were four or five drops of rain on each of our bikes.

We then set the GPS for the Oaks, Silverdale and beyond that Wallacia, as we had  decided that we would have lunch at the hotel there. We started out of Picton on Barkers Lodge Road and wended our way to the pub. That was a great 45 km of road, with not a lot of traffic and perfectly dry.

We had a top lunch (a venue worth remembering for future exploits) , and then decided on the way home. A couple of our riders wanted to pick up some motorcycle gear at a bike shop in Eastern Creek, one wanted to head straight home by the shortest possible route, and I was happy to head back to the Central Coast by whatever way transpired. So we headed off through Luddenham, where we got a bit messed around by the works for the new Badgery’s Creek airport. Two GPS’s had different views on which way to go, and both were wrong. Wayne finally rescued us and took us out on Elizabeth Drive,  the right road to get us to the M7 near Horsley Park, where we parted company for the day.

We really did have some delightful riding. As responsible mature age riders, we were of course “fully mindful” of the speed limit at all times, and had a very enjoyable day.

Frosty.

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