This is eBiking at its best: a Rail Trail from Koroit to Warnambool; through the Otway Ranges; the full length of the 250-km world-renowned Great Ocean Road and on to Geelong, then around the western side of Port Phillip Bay to Melbourne.
Saturday 16 January 2021. Koroit · Peterborough |83 km|
[Cold, showery and overcast the whole way, but mostly helped along by the strong south-westerly wind blowing onto my right-rear quarter]
After packing up the tent in early-morning drizzle and making my goodbyes to my new friends (see previous post), I scoffed down a breakfast of Cornish pasty and ‘Dare’ coffee-flavoured milk on the platform of the old Koroit railway station, and I was back on the eBike for the 20 km ride on the Rail Trail to Warnambool. This trail actually starts at Port Fairy and Koroit is half-way along it, so I missed out on the first half on this trip but to learn more about the full trail see my post #38 of December, 2018.
After some wetlands and a short section through a new upmarket housing precinct, the Rail Trail emerges onto the coast at a headland of the Merri River mouth and morphs into a seafront bike path through Warnambool. Actually, you miss Warnambool altogether if you stick to the coastal path, as the town proper remains hidden behind the coastal dunes of the foreshore reserve.
And so I found myself with the town already behind me when I emerged back onto the main road at the Hopkins River Bridge heading east towards Allansford on the eastern edge of the city. What a nice way to miss an entire city! (Well, ‘city’ by Australian standards anyway: population 35,000).
It’s a good idea to give the busy and narrow B100 road a miss along here if you’re on a bicycle. It’s called the Great Ocean Road from Allansford, but is nowhere near the coast, and I recommend taking the minor roads through Mepunga and Nirranda (locality names only – nothing there!) that crisscross the main B100 highway for some of the way.
But once you actually do hit the coast it’s straight on to some spectacular scenery at the Bay of Islands.
The Great Ocean Road Caravan Park in Peterborough, where I stayed for the night, is a non-descript park in a great location on the west bank of the Curdies River estuary. It was cheaper than the Koroit park ($20 vs $27 for an unpowered pitch) but nowhere near as good either. It was also jam-packed with holiday-makers – Melbournite families making the most of the small window of opportunity between the last COVID lockdown and the end of the school holidays. In fact, I was lucky to get in at all, and took the very last site available.
As for dinner, there was nothing available in town except dining-in at the Schomberg Inn next door to the caravan park. And now…how to be tactful about this…forget the tact: it was total utter crap! $24 for a miserly, tasteless spaghetti Bolognese, plus $14 for 2 pathetic small beers! I went off to bed in very ill humour that night.
Sunday 17 January 2021. Peterborough · Merango |113 km|
[Overcast and windy but no rain. Mostly side wind or slightly following tail wind. Very hilly, with 1,600m altitude ascended for the day].
I stopped at ‘trying-to-be-trendy’ Port Campbell at 9.30 am for the worst hamburger I’ve ever eaten ($22, kerchink!) plus a 500ml Gatorade and Dare iced coffee and a vanilla slice. I was feeling a bit cursed, food-wise, with this puke-inducing fare on top of last night’s offering. Still, we do need the calories don’t we!
I successfully negotiated the long climb to the touristic village of Lavers Hill on that fuel load and stopped there for 2 hours to recharge the bike batteries outside the community centre (same place I stopped last time through in December, 2017), and I dumped the remaining fuel load in the admirably-clean public toilet there, I might add. The rather posh bistros that I commented on last time I came through in December 2017 have all gone out of business, and the busy end of town has now shifted to the eastern fringe with much more modest ambitions.
I chatted to artist Brian who had an arts grant to paint the water tanks, and he showed me around the community centre to view a mock-up of the exhibit for which he’d received a commission to decorate the Warnambool Town Hall, or something of that nature.
I also had a nice long chat to a German guy travelling west by car with his wife and mother-in-law. They’d pulled up next to me for a lunch break. He was very knowledgeable and interested about all aspects of eBiking and this interaction made the charging time pass quickly and pleasantly.
Coming down out of the Otway Ranges into Apollo Bay township you round a headland called Marengo where there’s a great-looking caravan park situated right on the point with a superb outlook. Impetuously, I did an abrupt U-turn and went back to check-in even though I still had a good 20 km left in me and it was still only early in the day.
Yikes! This one broke the record for my most expensive campsite ever – $68 for a tiny unpowered barren pitch at a busy lane intersection (with everyone cutting the corner and tripping over my tent pegs) and right next to the bins a couple of metres from my tent! The French tourist behind me in his hired campervan was even more indignant about the price than I was and said I’d gotten off lightly – he’d had to pay $98 for his powered site. So beware – unbooked basic accomodation on the Great Ocean Road can be very expensive.
The steak sandwich and 2 cans of Bourbon & Coke I had for dinner – after the 8 km round trip into Apollo Bay to buy them – put some good bugs back into my gut and restored my humour somewhat.
Monday 18 January to Wednesday 20 January, 2021. Marengo · Apollo Bay |10 km|
Today’s ride was just a short mid-morning hop over to the eastern end of Apollo Bay, where I ended up stoppingh for 3 nights with my friends John and Jenny and their daughter Lisa in their holiday house.
But just to add insult to injury regarding last night’s exorbitant camping, I stopped off at the other caravan park in town on the way through, that is located in the recreation park on the Barham River near the centre of town, just to enquire about their prices and availability. The lady there was very apologetic when she said yes they do have tent sites available but due to peak season she’d have to charge me $42. “Well, that’s still $24 cheaper than the other rip-off joint!” I told her.
I just relaxed and hung out with my friends for 3 days; did some washing, went for a swim, cooked a nice dinner for us all, that kind of thing.
Thursday 21 January 2021. Apollo Bay · Geelong |115 km|
[Clear and calm; 19 – 23°C]
It was, as always, a fantastic ride along the Great Ocean Road. Sure, the road is narrow, there is little to no shoulder and it can be quite busy along here, but the tourist traffic goes slowly and I felt quite safe all along the whole route.
I stopped at Lorne for a pie and vanilla slice and at Anglesea for 2 hours to recharge up at a powered public shelter and soldiered on to Geelong. I was pretty happy with the day’s effort and stayed the night in Geelong, at the Barwon River Holiday Park ($50, unpowered). Like some other places recently, they were going to refuse me entry until I could prove I was me and that I lived in Victoria, and had to meticulously write down on the COVID declaration form all the places I’d been staying and was going to. My foraging expedition to the shopping centre nearby yielded an adequate Chinese takeaway and 2 cans of B&C.
Friday 22 January 2021. Geelong · Melbourne |104 km|
[Cold (bloody freezing at first) but clear and calm, gradually warming up to low 20s].
A boring ride out through Geelong and for 50 km afterwards, but more interesting from Werribie onwards. A new approach to carbo-loading was the half-length Subway sandwich I got at the Werribie Service Station outlet. I quite enjoyed it. I might even become a fan.
Managed to get lost several times too – around Werribie (because the road is closed off to the public and I had to go 7km on the freeway), and again around the maze of marina-style developments in the Point Cook/ Laverton area.
I got a pinch-flat in the rear tyre but couldn’t find the hole and so had to replace the tube. This took nearly an hour on the Williamtown foreshore.
