Day 416 | Coen camping: not the pub this time
51 km | zzOz total: 12,163 km
On the way north four weeks ago, the Peninsular Development Road, ie, the main north road between Coen and the Archer River roadhouse was as bumpy as any I’d travelled on, both with the oscillations of the hills and the smaller undulations of road surface. And so it proved for the first 15 km yesterday.
But it was the remaining flatter section that I was contemplating overnight.
The 29 km until I would reach a long sealed section north of Coen was etched into my memory as being particularly, ridiculously, soft, a real slog in a sandpit.
I was pretty intent on getting to the second Coen shop that had been closed when I cruised into town first time around a month ago, don’t arrive in small towns on a Sunday. I had needed replenishment mostly of my lunchtime munchings.
Somehow, in the way my life seems to work out, ie, completely unexpected, the whole experience on the dirt this morning was diametrically opposed to my previous travails, the road had been recently graded and the sand for the most part had been scraped away, leaving a fairly solid surface to trundle along. Not even too many other travellers racing to The Tip, seems the major tourist traffic has dropped from those days on the way up when it was school holiday time combined with the exodus from the Laura Show heading back to Weipa at great pace.
So not any sort of major trial, just a pleasant morning rumble on a beautiful Dry Season morning, warm and dry.
Terrific riding.