A journey in the winter sun (part 2)
Roseneath Cottage, Allora. A lovely spot to stay. Sholto, Bill, me poking my head out from behind JF, who is holding my Enigma.
So after a fun evening in Allora, including learning a card game called ‘May I’, we gathered ourselves up to launch forward towards Koreelah. At this point, you (my imaginary reader) may well be saying to yourself: Where the hell is Koreelah?
That’s a good question, and I don’t think I really know the answer. We just rode all day and got there.
The second day saw us heading towards Yangan and Killarney on some pretty quiet back roads. I got first shift in the car, so some of the excitement of the morning came from lending my titanium-framed road bike to JF. He really enjoyed riding it.
I decided my method of ‘providing support’ from the van would be to go on ahead of the three riders, park the car and jump on a bike and ride back towards them. The level of ‘support’ offered would be minimal, but if required, I could always go back to the car which would be at the most 10km away.
With this modus operandi I met the group twice in the morning’s ride, once near Freestone, and later on about 8km out from the lunch spot of Yangan.
For the second day in a row, Sholto and I managed to subvert John’s plan of making lunch from pre-purchased ingredients. Sholto went for the most massive burger available in Yangan, and of course i had some hot chips. It was winter on the Darling Downs, remember, and after a morning’s ride, nothing is better than hot chips.
After lunch I got back on the bike, and Sholto took the wheel of the van. We rode to Killarney by early afternoon. The plan for the day was just to ride down to Koreelah, which over the border in NSW. From Killarney, its south to Legume, then east and south to Koreelah.
But I put the challenge out to Bill … surely we had time for a side-trip of about 22km for the climb to Queen Mary Falls. In John’s original planning we were staying over the hill from Queen Mary Falls. But in the final draft, we were missing the climb altogether.
With plenty of daylight up our sleeve, Bill and I decided to ride up to the Falls. JF would continue on the route as per plan. Sholto eventually decided to drive the support car to the base of the climb, and then chase Bill and I up the hill.
So Bill and I made it up the climb to QMF, and went for a saunter to view the Falls. When we came back we were surprised to find Sholto waiting for us at the picnic grounds. So the three of us rode back down the hill together, and Sholto jumped back in the car to head off to Koreelah.
Bill and I enjoyed the ride over the border and past Acacia towards Legume. Beautiful country side. Once we left Legume, the road surface began to deteriorate, but the scenery was no less gorgeous.
We found this to be typical of this area of northern NSW over the next two days. The road surface was terrible on so many places, with massive potholing and poorly repaired bitumen. But we were riding through such lovely country we didn’t mind.
We arrived at the turn-off to Koreelah to find JF waiting for us. And about 5km of dirt road into Kumbee Homestead B&B. No problem, we set off on the dirt road, which started with a major downhill. Much to JF’s horror, Bill and I flew down this hill. John followed at a much more sedate pace.
We all made it to Kumbee Homestead, a fantastic location by the way, without either a dirt-road caused mechanical or accident, so there was no need for alarm!
End of Day 2.
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