Marty and I headed for the hills for a short ride last Sunday, 21May. It was around 8C and dry when we left Geelong and remained so for most of the ride.

Our first stop was at the Gellibrand store where a friendly greeting from Maria,a mug of hot chocolate and a chat with some nice folk from the Colac Ulysses club made for a very pleasant stop.

However, around Beech Forest the temp dropped even more.Along Turton’s Track the road was particularly greasy with lots of wet bark and leaf litter on the pavement. It was pretty obvious there had been significant rain overnight up there. I was glad to have new tyres with plenty of tread on them!

By the time we joined the Apollo Bay – Colac road there was a long line of slow cars ahead, so we pulled into the West Barwon dam lookout.

The brewery cafe at Forrest was stacked out so we headed back to Colac for lunch, then dropped in on Steve from 79 x 100 blog and inspected his latest Norton resto project.

I asked Steve if I could have a look at Heidi’s old bike which is stored here. Heidi is a friend who travelled solo around much of the world some years ago, including places like Iran and Turkey etc . This bike has been sandblasted by desert storms and ridden all day in searing temperatures.

The Funduro has well in excess of 100,000 kms on it and has never had any engine repairs. That Rotax motor seems indestructable!  Heidi is now travelleing through Africa with her husband Jens on diesel powered Enfields.Some great pics on their blog Dieselbike in Africa

From there it was a quick sprint along Hwy 1 back to Geelong.