Cycle Touring Australia - Narooma to Genoa
Narooma to Bermagui
A relatively short 35km ride since our legs were still feeling the burn after two 70km days back to back, we went off the Princes Hwy towards the coast via Bermagui Rd after hearing good things about the route from a few people we’d met on the way, and it didn’t dissapoint with some pretty spectacular views going through Wallaga Lake.
We took an extra day off to rest in Bermagui and rewarded ourselves for all the hard work with a room at the Bermagui Motor Inn, which felt like 5 star luxury compared to the tent. We spent the day relaxing, eating and exploring the town, it’s a cute little place with a friendly atmosphere and had a decent number of shops, restaurants and things to see. It was so nice that it made us reassess exactly how we wanted our trip to go, initially we were thinking we’d camp everywhere and do everything as cheaply as possible, but now realised that we needed more variety than that to get the most enjoyment out of the experience. So we decided that every 3-5 days we’d stop somewhere that looked nice and get a motel room for a day or two, it felt like we’d found our groove 🙂
Bermagui to Merimbula
Got to try out our raincoats for the first time on the way to Merimbula, it was raining lightly most of the day but wasn’t too bad, without the jackets we would have frozen on the downhills though. We were aiming for Tathra originally but still had some fuel in the tank when we got there so we pushed on for a couple more hours to Merimbula and got a motel room again, riding in the rain is one thing but neither of us were keen on camping in it.
We also finally crossed paths with another cycle tourist on his way to Sydney, he was from Denmark and had already been on the road for over 2 years and planning on cycling 40,000kms! …and we thought we were being adventerous.
Merimbula to Genoa
This was an exciting day because we reached a couple of milestones for the trip, we cracked 500km and crossed over the border into Victoria, I think this was the point we really believed we were gonna make it rather than just hoping.
Genoa was the smallest town we’d been to so far, in the middle of nowhere between a couple of state forests about 15km from the NSW / VIC border, we think there used to be something here a long time ago, but all that’s left now are some abandoned looking buildings and a pub (which surprisingly serves up a damn good chicken parma!). The only place to stay is the Genoa Wayside Stop which is a free camping area just over a little bridge from the pub, which is actually pretty good for a free campsite, it has toilets and cold showers, no drinking water though, we refilled our bottles at the pub.
Jan 12, 2013
