Wauchope-Werrikimbe- Kempsey and home again, not entirely in one piece.

A few beers in the shed on Friday arvo with Moose, sowed the seed for a ride Sunday, no firm plans were made but the thought was there. Flogging down rain on Saturday night sort of shelved any plans of a ride as it looked as though it had set in. To my surprise, Sunday dawned a beautiful day, that got me keen for a ride again.
I rang Moose and he was still keen although he was ear tagging cattle when I rang him, he said “give me an hour and I will be there”
A slight hiccup in my plan was when I was informed that the whipper snipper was to have a run around the yard first. That was done in world record time and I thought I was ready to rip!

I had fitted a big tank I got from TB to the XR on Saturday and just before Moose was due to turn up I filled the tank for the first time. Bugger! Fuel was dripping out of the tap directly onto the header pipe. Not a good thing to discover just before you head off for a ride. I quickly drained the tank and fitted another fuel tap just as Moose arrived.

We still didn’t have any idea where we were going to ride to, we scoured a few maps then decided to head off through Pappinabarra to Werrikimbe via Hastings Forest way and then make our way to the Macleay Valley.

The previous night’s rain made for some great riding conditions with no dust and a few slippery bits to keep you on your toes.

It is a great run up the mountain and the higher we got the cooler the temperature became and the tips of my fingers were starting to feel the cold when we got to a creek crossing I am sure TB will recognize.

It has a few big goolies in the water then a few treacherous rocks on the exit, it is alright if you are one of the first riders through but after a few have gone through it silts up and you cant see the big rocks, all the while you know the water is freezing and you dare not dab a foot and get your boot wet!

We stopped there for a rest and it was that cool it made it hard to roll a smoke as my fingers were freezing. There are a few rocky sections that also made things interesting.

It was one of these rocky sections that eventually put a bit of a dampener on my day. At the 85km mark, I rounded a corner at speed and found myself in a rutted rock garden, I am not entirely sure what happened but the next thing I knew, I was sliding down the road on my shoulder.

That took the wind out of my sails a bit as I hurt my shoulder and sprained my left thumb at the same time. Anyhow a spoonful of concrete saw me back on the bike, although I had lost my mojo as the shoulder was complaining and the thumb was reminding me that it wasn’t happy either.

The next stop was at Kookaburra, a deserted saw mill town from the 1960’s, there are still a few huts and a school there that you can get the key to from National Parks and stay there if you want.

From Kookaburra we wound our way down the mountain, which was a great ride that I would happily do again. We eventually made our way to Kempsey for a great feed at the West Kempsey Hotel. When we were there Bulls Wool came past and stopped for a quick yarn before we headed of on a merry adventure headed towards Wauchope Via Sherwood.

Moose had done this run before and was doing his best to remember the way, a wrong turn found us at a gate and just inside the gate was a street sign that said “Old Rollands Plains RD”, That’ll do us we thought and headed through the gate, the track lead us to a river crossing that wasn’t too hard, once we got across the river, the road petered out and in no time we were riding in a paddock that had no sign of a road in it any where. WE turned around and crossed the river again and made our way to Davis Road, which looked as though it headed south, (the direction we needed to go. WE followed it and a few wrong turns saw us confronted with more private property, we eventually found Geary’s Flat road and followed it, mindful that we were then starting to run out of daylight and we had to set a cracking pace in order not to be stuck in a piece of bush we didn’t know all that well, when darkness descended.

WE eventually popped out of the Bush in Upper Rollands Plains and I immediately recognized where we were and we high tailed it back to Wauchope via Cairncross State forest. In all we did a 275km run through some great country, the only downer was my come off, otherwise it would have gone down as an awesome day.