Victoria Bike Ride 2022

Today was a mostly straightforward ride through quiet country roads south from Echuca. After about 10km on tar we hit a dirt road, and were enjoying the lack of traffic. Also, it was not raining, there were no hills, and the wind (however slight) was behind us. So all seemed set for an easy day's cycling.  We were enjoying the serenity, riding on a good dirt road But soon there were some ominous muddy patches ahead As we may have foreseen, the good surface was not to last. The road had been churned up by heavy vehicles driving on it while wet, and it had turned to a tyre-sticking quagmire in places.  In a couple of places we wheeled our bikes off the road, to avoid getting the tyres clogged Wheeling around a quagmired road We were being very careful to look after the bikes. But then on this innocuous-looking stretch of road Kath stopped "I think something's wrong with my fender" "I'm pretty sure it's not meant to look like this" We were able to manha

Today we caught up with our friends Simon and Judy (see days 1,6 and 10) for a very enjoyable rest day, which involved a lot of bird-watching and  photography. We were picked up after breakfast and driven (in a car) to the Barmah National Park, near where we had ridden yesterday.  We had coffee at this establishment in Echuca on the way Just as we arrived at the national park, the Kingfisher was setting off on its morning cruise. We returned the waves of the passengers, and then set off on a walk through the forest.  The Kingfisher starting its cruise We immediately started seeing some interesting birds.  We saw this bird as soon as the Kingfisher had left While we expected it to flit rapidly away, the bird stayed for quite a while, so we took a few more photos of it before moving on.  The bird was in no hurry to move on So we took a few more photos of it The walk took us a couple of hours, as we stopped to examine all manner of interesting things on the way. Like these interesting-loo