What a day in the saddle. Packed up and rolled out of Atherton, with the first 10k a beautiful easy ramble. Cue the start of a 2k climb that made the 7k climb we did earlier this week look like child’s play. After 1k my chest was screaming and I really struggled to get my breathing into any kind of rhythm, which ended up with me pushing my bike the final k of the climb. This hardened my resolve that I would not be walking anymore today, and happily I was able to regulate better on the long rolling climbs in the afternoon.
This is a really beautiful area to be riding - today we travelled through tropical rainforest, through dairy cattle country, over long mountain climbs and down breath-taking descents. The quieter country roads are great to roll on, however some of those downhills were a little bit dodgy, so there was a little bit of feathering the brakes to account for the road surface, especially on approach to the wooden slat bridges across some sections of road.
Morning tea was spent at Herberton (only 19k in) before working the legs on some fast up and downs to Ravenshoe. Out from lunch we found ourselves on the highest road in Queensland, with an elevation of 1162m. Hard to believe that in the last 5 days we have pedalled from sea level to that height - actually less than that as Port Douglas was the last time we were at sea level. It really was a highlight of the day as it was a nice reward for the climbing we had done today.
I’ve made more wonderful friends on this ride - last night I camped opposite Trevor and Ian who I also had dinner with one night at camp. Trevor has done a few of these rides now (including a couple with his daughter), and this is Ian’s first CQ. I asked Ian how he was enjoying it so far and like so many of us he had a few mixed emotions, but still he is out here and working through the kms.
Trevor wanted to know whether he had made my blog yet - I had to tell him he had to do something pretty spectacular to get into my blog, so as I was loading my luggage this morning he came over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I think that’s enough to have earned him a mention!
Tonight I am camped next to Troy, Sue and Dylan who have done all 17 CQ rides, along with Jan who has done 15. They are such a wonderfully inclusive family and have some great stories about their days out on the road. Dylan was just a baby for his first ride, and Sue and Troy have two other boys who also joined them when they were younger. Jan runs a cycling company - she leads rides, teaches people to ride and schools people on how to ride on the road - I think that might just be a dream job!
Tomorrow we have a few more climbs before a fast downhill to Gordonvale. Hard to believe there are only 2 more days of riding left this year.
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