Wow, here we are at Day 7 - the next to last day on the ride and as they say, what goes up must come down.
Mareeba was a lovely place to visit, if not a little unnerving. They locked all of the gates into the Leagues club bar one to maintain security while we were there, so it was a little weird to be locked behind a six foot fence topped with barbed wire!
A gloriously flat ride today - the occasional up, but nothing major and nothing that our now much stronger legs couldn't handle. Another flat about an hour into the ride - so a record three flats for the event so far. I'm becoming adept at removing that back tyre with limited grease on the fingers.
Rest stop one done, and we pedalled through Mt Molloy onto the lunch stop. Found an interesting ruin on the top of rise into Mt Molloy, with the remains of brickwork kilns and metal boilers. Must google that one later on to find out what it was!
After lunch, the anticipation of a massive downhill section - 7km downhill, losing over 400m of elevation on the way down. A couple of photo ops on the way down, with views clear to Port Douglas. White knuckled it all the way to the bottom, wrestling the tandem to maintain control as we picked up speed. Brakes on to wash speed, then accelerate again. If it hadn't been so winding, it would have been fun to see how fast we could have gone. Felt sorry for the people who did this ride in reverse a few years back - could not imagine climbing up that particular stretch and being able to walk the next day!
While that was fun, gotta say the highlight of the day was cycling to the Mossman Gorge Visitor Centre and catching the shuttle bus out to the Gorge to enjoy the Daintree National Park.
I can't wait to come back and explore Mosssman Gorge further. Today we did only the skywalk and then took the plunge into the cold waters of the Gorge to refresh. Brisk, fresh and revitalising - can't describe how good it felt to just float and enjoy the tranquility.
Felt sorry for the non-cycling tourists who thought today would be a good day to experience the peace and beauty of the Gorge only to share it with 700 cyclists. Oh well, hopefully they will still be here tomorrow to enjoy it all over again.
Out of the water, back in the bus, back on the bike and here we are camped at the Mossman Showgrounds for the final night party. Some interesting costumes again this year, but with very limited charge left on the iPad, that will all have to wait til tomorrow night!
And finally the Dad jokes - Hayden sees an Expanda caravan. Says to me - if it's an ex-panda, wonder what it is now. Oh my, the dad jokes have begun!
So with the power running out the morning sees our final day of CQ13 finishing with a ride on the beach at Port Douglas. I can't wait - bring on 7am!
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