Long Ride 2016 - Day 9

April 16, 2016

Albany, WA to Margaret River, WA - 394km (4,200km)

Day 9 of the Long Ride 2016 was essentially the last day of the official ride, it turned out to be the most different day of the ride so far.

 

The last day is the only day that has a time that we must try to be at the destination by, this is to ensure that all riders can grouped and ride into the final locations as one, a massive undertaking when there's more than 400 riders.

 

We left Albany at around 9:30am after a breakfast at Kate's Place cafe.  If you're ever in Albany you have to have a meal at this place, the food is sensational and the service even better.

 

Once on the road it was an indication of what was to come.  The roads were brilliant, wide and open with just enough curves to keep things interesting. 

 

We headed west on the South Coast Highway through picturesque farm land, some of the prettiest landscape of its kind in the entire country.  The town of Denmark came up pretty quickly, just 54 kilometres away from Albany.

 

Denmark, with just a population of around 2,000 people, was first sighted by the Dutchman, Francois Thijssen, in 1627, well before Captain James Cook, claimed Australia for the British.  In fact Thijssen sailed as far east along the south of Australia to Ceduna.

 

The town gets it's name from the Denmark River named after British naval surgeon Alexander Denmark.  It's a great looking town but unfortunately time meant we couldn't spend too much time there.

 

We pressed on and the road just got better, plenty of twists to keep it interesting, our next stop would be to refuel in the town of Walpole, 66km further along the South Coast Highway.  It was here that we caught a number of other riders, and the fun began as a snake of bikes had to contend with the numerous caravans, for some reason these things love to travel at around 30kph below the speed limit, regardless of what the limit is, it's bloody dangerous in many ways.

 

The next town was Manjimup, and here is where a 'problem' began.  Some how we missed the turn we were supposed to take, to be honest there's so many names around here that end with 'up' that's it's easy to miss a turn.  If you don't believe me check out how many towns in the south west of Western Australia are called Manjimup, Callcup, Beedelup or Perup, there's so many it's hard to keep track of it all.

 

Missing the turn we ended up at Bridgetown, not a drastic mistake but one that might of meant we missed the start of the ride into Margaret River.

 

We took to the Nannup tourist road, one of the best bike roads I have ever been on, the scenery was stunning, the road fast and flow with a few tightish corners thrown in to keep things interesting.  The road itself eventually joined the direct road to Margaret River which, straightened out but did undulate throw hard wood and pine plantations, this in itself was quite spectacular.

After an hour or so on this road we eventually came to the muster point at Margaret River and met with all of the other riders.  After a a quick debrief we were on the road again and rider en mass through the town to the Quality Inn Margaret River where we greeted by staff, family and friends.

The Long Ride 2016 ended with presentations, a dinner and plenty of drinks.  It was announced that so far the ride had raised over $340,000 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, and much more in awareness of men's health issues.

It was a great night that ended with me slipping boozily into bed ...