Our original route out of Jindabyne was going to be through Adaminaby and the Namadgi NP but we decided in the end that we would take the more direct route on the blacktop through to Canberra. This was due to combination of things…mostly due to the fact that we were all not feeling 100%…Mark was lucky to register 20%!
Its quite a serious climb out of Jindabyne (and feeling seedy) this could have been quite a taxing day on the bikes.
Top of the rise out of Jindabyne
It was raining pretty hard, pretty much from the top of the rise to a place called Berridale where we stopped for a coffee. Our fortunes really changed from this point with a ripper of a tail wind and we stayed high and dry for the remainder of the day.
The Monaro Highway – to the north of Berridale – we had this weather circulating us all of the afternoon but we managed to stay dry!
The days riding was punctuated with a good number of lovely long rolling descents – the type where there are no bends in the road and the gradient is just right to not have to worry about using brakes at all…and freewheel at 50+ KPH …great fun!
We had officially left the Snowy
As such the kilometers were falling away – in comparison with previous days in the bush where it was taking 6+ hours to ride 50 or 60 k’s. Before we knew it we were rolling into Cooma where we stopped in the park for lunch and a cuppa. Cooma is quite a large town that reminded us all of Colac in Victoria.
The last leg of the ride into Bredbo was more of the same, a lovely tailwind and long straight descents through the rolling open grassy landscape of the Monaro high plains. We arrived at the Bredbo pub – it was Friday night and the locals were in fine form!
The Bredbo Inn was established in 1836 as such its one of the oldest pubs in Australia. As you would imagine the place is full of character and characters!
We chatted with a few of the locals including Kelpie a lovely fella who warned us about the big pull (hill) 6 minutes up the Monaro – The locals were setting into their Friday night darts competition and were drinking pretty hard… lots of lager and laughing on display on a Bredbo Friday night!
cyclingtocanberra 