Day 2 started with a fast run back through Hanging Rock and then Nundle State Forests. There were some nice sections through Wild Cattle Creek Road going south parallel and west of Nowendoc Road. The Mummel Gulf National Park road was also ‘Commodore’ standard.
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After lunch at Gingers Creek there was followed by some usually technical stuff along Spokes Mountain Trail and Coachwood Rd to Willi Willi.
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The ‘shortcut’ via Mackenzies Creek Rd to Bellbrook was certainly a shorter distance and all gravel. With all the gates it only saved about 4 minutes off the mostly asphalt alternative but I give it the solid vote.
The first day for me took me on a detour near Bulahdelah, through Gloucester and over Barrington Tops to Moonan Flat. I camped at Polblue overnight and dropped down to Moonan Flat to meet the rest of the group for lunch.
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The second half of my Day 2 took us from Moonan Flat to Nundle via the most popular route past Ellerston and through Glenrock and Barry Stations.
We arrived a little ahead of time so we took an extra trip up to Woolomin through the forest.
Oxley Wild Rivers National Park is part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area. The park is bordered in the south at Yarrowitch and Werrikimbe National Park, in the east by Willi Willi National Park, Wittitrin and Bellbrook, in the north by the Stix River, Wollomombi River, and Gara Gorge and in the west by Dangars Gorge and Apsley Falls.
The Oxley Wild Rivers Tour did a ‘figure 8’ north from Moonan Flat via Bellbrook to Ebor and Armidale and then south via Walcha and Gingers Creek to Gloucester.
This was a RideADV navigation ride starting and finishing in Lake Cathie. It was fully supported and followed some great tracks out thru Waichope, up the Forbes River along Cockerawombeeba Trail thru Kookaburra to Williwarrin for fuel. After lunch we went up to Kosekai Lookout and while some riders felt like the challenge of Jacobs Ladder, there was an alternative route for heavier bikes back to Nambucca.
The next day was described as a “gentleman’s adventure ride” and weaved it’s way thru what I describe as Disneyland (Greenhills Road) in the Ngambaa Nature Reserve, fuel in Kempsey and a run past Cresent Head to Ferry at Port Macquarie.
A breakout run was taken my quite a few down the beach side – Plomer Road.
I added 2 days to this ride by way of the ride up via Killabakh and a ride back via Crowdy Head, Forster and Seal Rocks.
OK – so fully supported rides have a lot to offer, tested routes, a support vehicle etc. But there are some cons as well.
The people who come on these rides are time poor and want to focus on riding hard. They are also mostly repeat patrons so there is a sort of clicky group thing going on. I don’t detract from all this at all, good luck to them doing their thing. But it’s not for me generally speaking. I like to know where I’m going in advance. I like to have a purpose for going there other than riding as fast as I can to get there. and I like to be able to answer a hypothetical question – “Do you know where you went today?”. Generally riders on these rides have little interest in these issues – they’re concentrating on the rider in front all day till the beer is served. There – I’ve made my peace.
But I’m glad I started riding this way, in the knowledge that a support vehicle was following behind ready to help if I needed it. And that’s what you pay for.
Cautions
none
Accommodation
2 nights at Lake Cathie and one at Nambucca, motel style rooms.
OSM Map Corrections
none
Stats
Planned: 1,100kms
Ambient Temp
14-30C
Road Conditions
no rain all roads dry & dusty some causeways very little water
My first Scrapheap ride. A great bunch of people and a very friendly atmosphere all the way there and back. The tracks chosen were fantastic. Views over Liverpool Plain, some really good tracks thru the plain. Early on the second day, we all got foxed by this long section of marble road surface. It had everyone stopping and scratching their heads over whether their tyre inflation was right. It was… It was just a wild surface like running on 1 inch glass marbles.
The road back thru Kentucky and Nundle Stat Forest was a really nice ride. My first time thru Glenrock and Barry Stations and the river crossings all had water.
The long run thru Tomalla had some great views and it seemed like a long way down into the Woko Campground. We arrived at about 7pm.
A really great bunch of people. A lot of different bikes. I enjoyed the corner man system you get to wave at everyone a number of times thru the day instead of nav rides where you sometimes only see some people at dinner time.
During a recent visit to London, my eye couldn’t help but notice a blatant conformity in business uniforms. A weekday, of course, not seen on Saturday or Sunday as much, these 6 snaps were taken within 5 minutes walking down Piccadilly in Mayfair.
General Characteristics: Blue slim-fit suit, brown shoes (if you have it right) and occasionally no socks…
Click to view this project on flickr. or preview the collection from the grid below.
Motivated by an exercise to maintain a notebook/diary of work in printed form with notes, I’ve started a collection of the most recent photos from intermittent visits to the CBD.
I have, since Workflow – Step 4, printed the two images shown below:
This one printed a little darker than my preference. I have since moved the Blacks slider in LR Develop to +100. If I print again, it should be more like this second shot.
I printed this second photo and am very pleased with the contrast and depth. I have since cropped and framed the photo. The crop was done to focus completely on the people, from under the edge of the cliff to below the feet of the nearest person. The effect is similar to the header image of most pages on this website.
So I have finally arrived at the last stop of importing my photos into Lightroom where I catalog, spot removal, exposure adjustment, final cropping and export to a print ready file, or export to Flickr or other website.
I have just sent off my first file for printing. The lab wanted the file as a TIF, in 8bit, at 254dpi. To make the best of the discounted printing deal they offer, it has to be exactly 20×30″.
This is easy to achieve as long as the original is slightly higher resolution, which it is when scanned at 2400ppi. The only slight downside with this deal is that 20×30″ is not the same aspect ratio as the 4×5″ negative.
I can either crop the 4″ dimension of overrun the 5″ side. For the moment I am printing a 20×25″ which incurs more cost. I’ll post an update shortly.
The photo I am printing is show here. It offered a good test of some spot removal and exposure settings. Whatever comes back will provide a good learning curve to future efforts.
