It was bound to happen at some point. I missed a turn somewhere and ended up in the wrong place. I set out for Pokolbin at 6:30 this morning. If you look on the map below, you'll see Pokolbin on the far left (top), but I'll have to leave that for another day.
Within the first kilometer I felt tired and found myself going forward pretty slowly. It took me a while to realize that there was a bit of a wind and I was heading straight into it. The wind was against me for quite a while, but I hoped that that would mean it would help me get home on the way back.
The wind didn't last too long, but there were also more hills in the first part of this trip than any of the trips I've done since the Loop The Lake race. Pretty pretty country and the hills just seem to make it a little more interesting.
At Kurri-Kurri I found the road heading to Weston/Cessnock, but I was planning on going back via Cessnock so on the way there I wanted to head up north via Keinbah and Lovedale. So I stopped to ask for directions and the guy said "back to that road, at the T-junction turn right, next T-junction turn left and next T-junction left again. Looking at the map now, I realized that what he forgot to mention was that the 2nd T-junction was leading off the road that I would be on and not the road that I was on running into a T-junction as the first one. As the first T-junction was quite a distance on, I didn't think much of it at first and by the time I started thinking this was going on too long, what could I do?
When I cycled into Rutherford I knew something was wrong as I had seen the name on Google maps and knew that it was not on my planned route. By then I had done 50Kms and my original route was meant to be 128Kms, which would have been my longest cycle yet and this 25km detour would just have been too much for me for one day. So I decided to head back and discovered that Rutherford was on the New England highway, so I did not have to retrace my route back through the hills and hoped for flatter ground on the way back.
I was completely aware that I do not have anything interesting to write about except for getting lost and had only taken photos of one farm along the way. So, when I saw a sign for the Maitland Steam Fest, I decided to go take a couple of shots.
Okay, so it's the Steam and vintage machine fest...
It was a little bit interesting, but I gave up smoking for a reason and I think spending too much time in between those poison-puffing machines can't be too healthy. Also, true to these small town shows, the organizers didn't care much about preparing anything for photographs. Nonetheless, the kids seem to love it and it gave me something to take some photos of.
As I headed into Hexham, which is generally my last marker and means that I am less than 10Kms from home, a storm broke out. I had just noticed the clouds and was wondering whether I'd make it home in time and next minute it came pouring down with a pretty strong wind again directly against me. I thought the last 10Kms would take forever in that wind, but fortunately it disappeared just as fast as it came on.
The total trip was 81Kms and I must say that today has given me quite a bit of hope. These weren't major hills but there certainly were a lot more hills than any of my rides in the last couple of weeks.
