Zig zag road

It's always interesting to discover new places to ride. This particular route was one that I was going to inspect from the other side a couple of years ago, but never really got around to it. I hadn't really planned to check it out today, but somehow it came up.



I had started with another disgustingly hot and humid morning (which would later become a disgustingly hot and humid day), and caught the northerly down to the southern end of the 'Coast before heading for Urliup, with plans to visit the Garden of Eden, high in the hills of Tomewin.



Pretty much everything unfolded as I'd expected -- although the humidity brought with it a haze that effectively extinguished any mountain views. The promise of cooler temperatures on the mountain, however, gave me enough motivation to commence the climb of Tomewin from the southern end. Usually fatigue is supposed to weaken you as you climb, but on this occasion, there was still some cloud cover at the summit, which had the opposite effect.





It was then the usual detour down Garden of Eden "road", before heading east across the ridge on Glengarrie "road". There was, however, something different about this stretch today. It seems the Tweed Shire Council have once again decided to "upgrade" a "road" that nobody uses, meaning that long sections of the rougher stretches had been dug up. Effectively it was like riding through a garden at times.

It was on one such "garden" that I had the back wheel slide out. Riding at a relatively slow speed gave me plenty of time to recover and avoid crashing, but it did give me the opportunity to stop and talk to one of the locals on the mountain. Evidently there was a second way into Bilambil -- a dirt, switchback road called "the zig-zag road".



The zig-zag road actually took out quite a bit of distance, and a couple of decent climbs. It was an interesting detour, but overall I still think the "old road" on this ride has more to offer. It wasn't long before I was back in Bilambil and commencing the long ride home into the wind, made a lot thicker by the humidity of the day. How humid was it? Well I don't recall the sun actually shining properly at any stage of the day -- even after the clouds had cleared.

I really hope it's not like this on the long-weekend tour in just two weeks' time.