Lap of the Mount

I had a call from my older bro last weekend asking me if I'd like to meet him and the kids at Bathurst for lunch. Checking in for permission with the minister of finance and warfare who was conveniently tied up with the kids at a netball event I was in luck. He said to meet him about 11:30am at Mt Panorama one of Australia's premier car road racing circuit. Sweet I thought, sounds like a fun day out on the bike


First stop was at the historic marker at Mitchell's Pass coming down the other side of the Blue Mountains. The westerly winds were blowing hard today with 50-60kmh gusts, I was getting blown about a bit and the roads were covered in leaf litter and fallen tree limbs.

Historic Mitchells Pass marker 1832

Victoria Pass

I continued on out to little hartley and turned off down the Oberon road. I had plenty of time till I had to be there so I thought I'd ride down through Jenolan Caves as it had been some considerable time since I'd been this way.

Blue Mountains

I stopped to put the gopro on, but low and behold it turned itself off after a few seconds, then when I got to the cave noticed it was off so no footage. It went flat within 10 seconds of turning it on. I think its time for a new gopro.

Jenolan Caves main entrance

From the inside looking back out

The inside of this cave is absolutely huge. It's so big there is a building built inside up on the top of one of the rock outcroppings. Stalactites hang down from the ceilings on one side of the cave.

The R1's exhaust sounded pretty fucking magic giving it a few revs inside the cave. Just after I arrived a group of about a dozen dirt bikes showed up on a group ride.

There are many different smaller caves that lead of out of the main cave. I'd like to come back here with the kids one day and explore these.

After leaving the caves I rode up the steep incline out of the valley, the wind had picked up again. It was blowing that hard I had to slow down to 80kmh in a few spots as I was getting blown about. I stopped in for fuel at Bathurst around 11:30am. A large storm was blowing in quickly. After refueling I messaged Flyboy and headed straight up to the mountain.

Just as I arrived I noticed their Suv in the motor museum car park so I pulled up and said hello. They were unloading the push bikes so they could ride them around the mountain circuit. Better them than me I thought. Just then it started to spot with some rain, but as soon as it had started it was over again and the storm had blown off to the east.

I stopped for a pic of the start/finish straight as those mtb's flew by at a blistering 12-15kmh. I pulled up next to them before darting off up the mountain for a few photos.

The famous Mount Panorama skyline

Bathurst with passing storms

I reached the top of the skyline and looked back, the mtb's would still be climbing mountain straight, so I have plenty of time to stop for more photos before I lap them, heh heh.

Bathurst from Skyline

Coming down the mountain through the dipper and esses is a lot of fun, but you could easily be doing license losing speed up here. It's a public road most of the year and it has a heavy police presence year round for obvious reasons, so I was on my best behaviour.

Conrod Straight

I came around the start line again and headed back up the mountain. As I was going slow I was curious to see how far around the mtb's would be, I found them riding up the steep hill towards the cutting the 3rd corner on the track. Pulling up next to Flyboy I checked the speedo, yep 6 kmh, it is a very steep hill in their defense. He speed up to 16kmh after I gave him a ribbing and then he tried to grab hold to get a tow but I speed off and left him in my dust. Haha. A few more photo stops and they caught up at skyline.

Flyboy, Flygirl and Batman

More storms over Bathurst after one lap

By this time they rode off down the hill. I checked my tyre's temperature, the front was a little warm but the back was no longer warm. I thought this could be interesting coming down the twistiest part of the track with cold tyres.

The first right hand bend and the rear tyre was sliding, then the very next left corner into the dipper the rear was sliding again. I little disconcerting, lucky the front didn't slide. I caught back up to them down near the end of conrod straight. They can go down hill pretty damn fast. Bet they were breaking the speed limit, bloody hooligans. You wouldn't see me doing anything like that.

Back at the motor museum about an hour later we decide to have a look around the museum. Neither of us had been inside for years and the kids had never been.

The size of the museum had doubled since I was here last more than 15 years ago. I was surprised to see that they had a lot of bikes in here. There was an excellent display of Greg Hansfords race bikes. Sadly Greg was killed in a touring car race at Phillip Island back in the 90's.

The front 3rd was a mixture of cars and bikes, but the middle 3rd was dedicated to bikes which was a pleasant surprise. The last bike racing that I remember here was back in 1988 before it was abandoned for being to dangerous. I wonder if these people have heard of the Isle of Mann.

Wayne Gardners 1987 championship winning 500cc two stroke beast was on display with wayne's rothmans leathers of the day.

I noted that his Moriwaki Superbike and race leathers were also on display here. He raced this bike famously in Britain, Daytona and Japan where he won the suzuka 8 hours and humiliated the honda factory team.

The exhaust engineering seems to be pretty shonky on that pipe

The list of race winners has some pretty famous names on it especially the last year 1988, one Michael Doohan.

Moving on into the last 3rd of the museum this was dedicated to the V8 race cars that had made Bathurst famous.

Peter Brock lauded as King of the Mountain by many famously won 9 bathurst 1000 races the most in it's history. His 1978 X9 Torana is on display as well as one of the early race winning Commodores(Taxi).

After finishing up looking at all those beautiful bikes and cars we headed into town for some grub, at the Oxford Hotel. I thought I'd just get a small burger for lunch. When it came out it was anything but small. I think it was almost as big as my head.

I said goodbye to the family as they made their way home back towards Brisbane. I decided that I would ride back through Lithgow and take the Bells line of road home through the mountains. I was soon regretting have such a large lunch, especially seeing as I had a late night before as I began to get very tired riding along here. I thought I needed a coffee to keep me alert and awake.

The scenery along the Bells Line sure is great every time you travel along this bit of road.

I was about an hour from home but desperately needed to stop for a coffee as I was feeling unusually fatigued. I stopped in at Bilpin. One shop had a nice deal for coffee and home made apple pie. I didn't need the pie but boy it sure was good. The coffee did the trick keeping me alert for the last leg home. All up a great days riding if only a short ride. Thanks bro.

Cheers

Jenolan Caves Road

I'd woken up early this morning hoping to start out scooterbobs Sydney adventures but when I looked out the window I was very disappointed. Rain, rain and more rain and it doesn't look like it's clearing anytime soon looking at the weather radar.

So until it clears up a bit here's a little video I made up from the ride down into Jenolan caves last week.

New Years Day Ride

I decided on heading out for a decent ride on new years day to kick the year off. I thought that this would be a great day as most people would be still in bed from a big night on the booze from new years eve celebrations, so hopefully there wouldn't be many people out and about. So the destination for today's solo ride was the Taralga hotel for lunch taking in as many twisty bits in between as possible. I decided to take my camel back today as it was going to be in the 30's. I'm glad I did. It's also double demerits here in NSW so I'll have to be careful.

First up was riding up through the Blue mountains via the bell's line of road. I've always liked the area around Bilpin where the tree's are evergreen, with apple orchards all along the road side. You can even come up here and pick your own apples. There are plenty of fruit shops along here too selling apples, apple pie and anything with apple in it.

Apple Orchards

Bilpin Post office & store

Leaving Bilpin behind I headed up into the Mt Tomah and Mt Bell sections of road where it becomes a bit more twisty and fun. It's funny how you build up a perception of how fast you think you can go on the road, then do a track day and suddenly find some new found speed. These sections whizzed by very quickly with little effort.

 I took a small detour down one of the dirt tracks to a lookout for Mt Banks. I didn't go all the way down but I still had some spectacular views of the canyon walls with Mt Banks on the left of that.

Mt Banks

I couldn't hang around for too long to look at the views as there was still a lot of riding to do to get to my lunch destination. I continued along until Bell where I turned off and crossed to Mt Victoria and headed down Victoria Pass. It was an excellent choice as there was hardly anyone around this morning, my hunch was right everyone had a big night and the roads were empty including highway patrol cars.

Victoria Pass Motogp track

The monument below was put there in 1832 when this section of road was built. The stone bridge was built by convict labour to cross the last point between the 2 ridges as the only way down from the mountains on the western escarpment and it was completed in 1832. It's pretty much unchanged today. There's a lot of stone work in that bridge. I wish they would upgrade the bridge to 2 lanes each way like the rest of the road here.

I soon turned off the great western highway and headed out towards Jenolan Caves. And started the long climb back up the ranges for the sudden drop down into the gorge where the caves are. No pics of the caves today as I've taken pics of them before you can find them here.

Plenty of wildlife to be on the lookout for

I arrived in Oberon for a quick fuel stop. Every time we've stopped here for fuel its been 20-30c dearer than anywhere else. Today I found out the BP in town was 6.5c per litre cheaper than the shell so if your riding  through try the BP(soon to be caltex) first.

Rather than ride out through the boring bit to black springs I'd back tracked out the Jenolan Caves road to shooters hill road which takes you down onto the abercrombie road and Taralga. I love this bit of road its very scenic and also high speed(but also very good at cruising speed). The road is basically here for the logging trucks and is very wide and very smooth much unlike other roads around here. There was a couple of kangaroo's that had been hit and were laying on the road just over a crest which became a bit tricky to negotiate at speed.

I was like brap, brap, brap.....lean over, then brap, brap. brap

As I was doing a solo run today there wasn't anyone to take photo's of standing next to their bikes so I had to get in some of the shots. Here's my first selfie.

As I got closer to Tarlaga I put the gopro on going down into the gorge. Not much to look at when I watched it back so it didn't make it onto the blog today. A bit furthur down the road I noticed that there was about 20 odd wind generators on the hills just out of Tarlaga. I don't remember seeing them before. Might have to take a closer look.

I got into town just before 12pm right on time for lunch. I was pretty hungry by now. There was only 2 people in the pub today, still it was early. I hope they are doing lunch today as I didn't ring ahead and it is a small country town. As luck would have it they were doing lunches. I ordered a steak sandwich and an ice cold beer to wash it down with. I can recommend the steak sandwiches here. It was fantastic. About 20 minutes later the pub had a good crowd in.

It was 1pm and time to get going again, I took a quick detour out to the wind farm to have a look at it. These definitely were not here last time I came out here. I saw a notice on the wall of the pub which said something about 50 odd wind generators would be installed as part of the project.

Just one of the blades on these things is the size of a semi trailer that's how big these things are. They are huge.

It was starting to get hot standing out here in the blazing sun in full leathers so it was time to keep moving. I was basically retracing my steps back to Oberon for fuel then home.

On the way back I stopped along Shooters Hill road at a turn off on the road. I was wondering what was down the road, it looked inviting so it was time for another quick detour. It turns out this road was just as good as shooters hill road with big wide smooth tarmac with forested verges all the way along with the road being like a roller coaster ride. This is R1 territory.

They should have locked me up, sorry your honor I couldn't help myself...did you see the roads on my blog. You would of too if you had an R1.

It turns out that the road comes to an end, well an end of the tar that is, but it continues on further. The road was only about 10km or less but oh what a road. So that was it for me I turned around and had to ride those sweet sweet roads again. Can you tell how upset I was about that?

Please please tar the rest of this

I'd made it into Oberon with the fuel light on for about the last 50kms. I filled up 16 litres for 238kms which is 6.72lt/100km. I normally get around 5.6lt/100km. These roads do make your bike thirsty.

By the time I left Oberon with a refilled camelback I went straight back down Duckmaloi rd and up Victoria pass and back along the bells line. It was hot, bloody hot. It was making me tired faster, so I slow it down to the limit across the bells line. I saw my first highway patrol and it was about 4pm. Not bad for today. It was 35°C when I got back into Richmond. I was knackered in the heat after a full days ride. The camelback was a life saver in the afternoon heat. You couldn't wipe the smile off my face for hours after. What a fantastic day and a great way to see in the new year.



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