Planning a winter getaway tour along the Great Ocean Road

  1. Home
  2. Cycling
  3. Planning a winter getaway tour along the Great Ocean Road

Although I’m absolute­ly lov­ing my job at Starlight, I’ve been work­ing pret­ty hard this year and between the pres­sures of work, fam­i­ly, home and par­ent­ing I am des­per­ate­ly in need of a lit­tle break. So I’ve booked out a week’s leave at the end of August to tack­le the Vic­to­ri­an Great Ocean Road. And because I’m a sil­ly bas­tard I’ve opt­ed for the wild and wet weath­er that the Ship­wreck Coast is renowned for at this time of year. Fun!

My part­ner is work­ing from War­rnam­bool that week, so I’ll meet her and spend a few nights togeth­er chill­ing out and enjoy­ing the local hos­pi­tal­i­ty, before she heads home and I depart on my way. I’ll ride from War­rnam­bool to Gee­long over the space of a few days, camp­ing along the way, with a hotel here or there, and even a spot of trout fish­ing planned at Aire River.

From Apol­lo Bay to Angle­sea, I’ll ride along one of Aus­trali­a’s best stretch­es of tar­mac, the world-famous Great Ocean Road. I’m look­ing for­ward to the low­er traf­fic that win­ter will bring, even if it means brav­ing the elements.

Divider illustration

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra col­ors. And the peo­ple there see you dif­fer­ent­ly, too. Com­ing back to where you start­ed is not the same as nev­er leaving.

Ter­ry Pratchett
A Hat Full Of Sky

A broad outline of the trip

  • Warrnambool

    Start­ing in War­rnam­bool, head­ing east towards Allans­ford and then mean­der­ing down towards the start of the Great Ocean Road and stop­ping for the night in Port Campbell.

  • Port Campbell

    Leav­ing Port Camp­bell and pass­ing the Twelve (or less!) Apos­tles Marine Park before climb­ing through to Lavers Hill and stop­ping the night at Johan­na Beach.

  • Johanna Beach

    Leav­ing Johan­na Beach, hope­ful­ly get­ting in a spot of fish­ing on the Aire Riv­er,  then arriv­ing at Apol­lo Bay.

  • Apollo Bay

    Cycling along the coast all the way from Apol­lo Bay and stop­ping at Lorne for the night at the Mantra hotel.

  • Lorne

    Leav­ing Lorne and head­ing towards Angle­sea, then leav­ing the Great Ocean Road through Torquay and then Geelong.

  • Geelong

    If I’ve still got the ener­gy to ride home from Gee­long, I might make anoth­er day’s trip out of it, but I’m just as like­ly to call it to an end and train it home. TBC.

0 km
Route Distance
0 m
Total Climbing
0 days
Approximate Riding Time

Gear

The Great Ocean Road is heavy with tourists, and I’m going on the assump­tion that even in the off sea­son there will be places to stop and eat. I’ll take some freeze-dried meals just in case, as well as my “fuel” for cycling, but oth­er­wise it affords me the chance to slim down a lit­tle on the cook­ing gear.

I am also not need­ing things I would take into the bush, like fire­light­ing gear, hatch­et, fish­ing rod hold­ers — I will fish, but not with bait — solar pan­els, water blad­der and so on.

The reduc­tion in bush camp­ing gear will be off­set by increased cold and wet weath­er gear. I’m plan­ning to take both my sleep­ing bag as well as my wool blan­ket. I will take both tarps, but have man­aged to reduce the ropes a lot by using 1.75mm Dyneema lines with Dutch­Ware hard­ware, tiny lit­tle tita­ni­um tie-offs giv­en cute lit­tle insect shapes and names like Fleaz, Flyz, Ring­worms and Stingerz.

I took a lit­tle test ride today (Sun­day 21 August) ful­ly loaded to test the han­dling and every­thing is hunky dory. I tried to wob­ble and throw the bike off and my trusty Ser­e­na just kept on true to form.

One of the weird­ly per­verse ben­e­fits of antic­i­pat­ing wet and windy weath­er is that I’ve paid a lot more atten­tion to water­proof­ing and weight dis­tri­b­u­tion, which in turn has led me to prob­a­bly my most care­­ful­­ly-con­sid­ered pack yet. Here’s hop­ing it goes the distance!

Pho­to of Angle­sea road by Wee Ping Khoo on Unsplash. Aer­i­al pho­to of road and beach by Gagan­deep Singh on Unsplash.

Category: Cycling
Tags: , , ,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Fill out this field
Fill out this field
Please enter a valid email address.

Other cycling-related posts