DAY 44  2 AUGUST ROPER BAR TO MOLE HILL

Up and at ‘em.

Chris O’B had not wanted to wait so had gone on ahead yesterday.  We set him up with food for the trip and went back to resting.

Today we headed off down the road. (After I had incredibly luckily found my rear vision mirror (the Take a Look)  which I had taken off my sunglasses to go fishing and put on my handlebar bag,not in the tent as usual due tiredness and then dropped off the bag when going to the shop yesterday morning.

The first 5km out of camp were beautiful smooth hard clay roads. Unfortunately that goodness was only associated with the new Roper high level bridge. The 10 km after that degenerated quickly to the point that we were off the bikes and walking them over the corrugations and dust for a kilometre or so.

After that the road improved and became merely stoney, rough and hilly.

After three hours we had bounced over thirty kilometres of this and stopped for smoko (a rest and some bites of our sandwiches) before another eight kilometres of jjolwto,miracle of miracles,  a picnic table under a steel roof with a tank full of the cleanest coolest water we had seen for over a week. We all drank heaps (nearly two litres in my case)  of this nectar. Then lunch of hard boiled eggs (2) and sandwiches or:- for me,  a can of baked beans (I keep vomiting up bread).

Next miracle, the bitumen started several hundred metres from the lunch stop.  Pictures taken of all of us kissing the blessed black stuff,pump up the tires (down below 30 psi after a week of dirt)  and on into the baking afternoon heat.

Brian and Christine soon left me way behind. I found them waiting for me in the shade of the turnoff sign to the Hodges Creek road 25 kms later.

We agreed that I wouldn’t be able to make another 25 kms so set the sights on looking for a campsite from 15 kms further on.

At 10 kms the road started climbing a ridge.  The hills,  and the dropping temperature, gave me a spurt of energy so that a few kilometres later I was going strongly when Christine called me off the road to the camp in a gravel pit.

Apart from being in a stand of paperbark trees which meant no good firewood around, the camp was good ;  level,flat, no stones,off the road.