From big to great – the Great Ocean Road
Trip Start
Feb 20, 2010
1
5
60
Trip End
May 28, 2010
Nelson, Victoria, Australia
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
We left Torquay on Monday morning and headed to the famous Bells Beach to watch the surfers. It rained on and off all day. After stopping at Anglesea for breakfast, we headed towards Lorne to see Erskine Falls and Teddy's lookout, then had lunch at Lorne. The winding road was wonderful… We had planned on staying overnight at Wye River (just because of the name) but the lady at the tourist information centre at Lorne suggested Bimbi Park as an overnight stay so we continued on to Cape Otway, stopping for photo opportunities as we went
Along the Great Ocean Road
. Just after leaving Apollo Bay the rain came down even heavier and the wind was wicked. It turned out that Bimbi Park was down a 1km dirt track but as the rain and wind were so bad we needed to stop. I had my first taste of riding on corrugation, and almost came off when we hit sand – but we made it eventually. On arriving at the park we decided to opt for the on-site caravan instead of swags (to keep warm and dry). The caravan was basic to say the least but at least it kept the rain out.Tuesday morning was overcast and cool, but looked dry. We headed out along the dirt road and down to the Cape Otway Lighthouse, only to find that it was closed! We didn’t want to sit in the carpark (where you couldn’t even see the lighthouse or the ocean views) for over an hour, so we left. We stopped about an hour up the road (at a beautiful lookout) to put on our wet weather gear – it was raining again! The winding roads and the scenery made up for the horrible weather though and we had a lot of ‘photo opportunity’ stops along the way. When we stopped at the 12 Apostles we met some more Ulyssians travelling to Albany (the long way round) who are also taking 3 months to travel around Australia, from Brisbane. Breakfast was at Port Campbell, then we headed to Portland for lunch. The weather was much better from lunch time on - dry and warm but not hot
Bells Beach - Great Ocean Road
. The Tourist info centre at Port Fairy suggested Nelson as our next overnight stop – I was a bit hesitant after our last recommendation, but a couple that we met in Portland (more Ulyssians) also recommended Nelson. The afternoon was beautiful and dry so we decided to swag again.
The Great Ocean Road has been great riding but we have travelled along it a lot quicker than we expected. The bad weather stopped us doing a lot of the ‘touristy’ things that we may have otherwise done but we haven’t missed out on anything. I had my first taste of ‘wind burn’ which made my face bright red, and it felt like it was burning up, but unlike sunburn it doesn’t actually burn your skin and it eventually cools down. Tomorrow we head along the coast towards Adelaide.
