meander

the plan was to spend two days riding to hawker along the mawson trail as the trail meandered its way to hawker.

we started early from buckaringa getting some good kilometres under our belts. riding through simmonston (a town never developed, but land was sold) and over the wilochra plan was quite boring with not much to see and the threat of rain, we just rode as quickly as we could.

the mawson trail hit the main road about 35km south of hawker and followed it for 1.5km. then back on to the dirt. this is when the heavy rain hit us. we struggled on and passed over the main highway again this time to head towards craddock and away from the main road. we stopped for a quick bite to eat in the driving rain and to decide what to do. and as the road we were to take towards craddock filled with rain and looked sodden, we decided that the only way forward was on the highway. so we ditched all the extra water we were carrying for our night bush camping and headed back to the highway. and just in time as dyon was having trouble with the road surface, slipping his way a hundred metres back to the main road.

while we were eating lunch pete and rob  (who we had met in melrose and are heading to alice springs via the mawson trail) rode past along the highway. dyon thought we could catch them so with our heads down we rode as fast we could. it was a touch slog of 28km to hawker. it was all slightly up hill with a terrible headwind. my legs were burning and i felt that i just couldn't keep going sometimes. when we managed to get out of the wind we could ride up to 18km/h but into the headwind we somtimes slowed down to 9km/h.

finally we got into hawker with chattering teeth and soaked to the bone. we never managed to catch pete and rob, there were always ahead of us. however, we did get a cabin in the flinders ranges caravan park in hawker for two nights so we had a rest day in hawker as well. we caught up with rob and pete over a few beers and a pub dinner, much better than in the saoking wet.

our rest day was spent huddled in the cabin as fierce winds blew outside and scattered showers so we were glad that we had warmth and shelter.