Planning our tour of the Apple Isle — and doing it this time!

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So we start­ed plan­ning this trip a few years ago, and unfor­tu­nate­ly events at home (and not just the pan­dem­ic!) have tran­spired to keep us off our bikes for the most part, with a few excep­tions such as my Great Ocean Road trip, but I had to do that one solo. In that time I’ve start­ed a new job, Danielle bought a beau­ti­ful cus­tom Velo Orange Pass Hunter gravel/touring bike and impor­tant­ly, my chil­dren have con­tin­ued to mature to the point I can now leave them for a few weeks to go a‑touring!

As with our orig­i­nal plan, we’ll fin­ish the tour by stay­ing with Danielle’s par­ents in Sandy Bay, a sub­urb of Hobart, for Christ­mas. We’ve booked the Spir­it of Tas­ma­nia fer­ry — which now departs from Gee­long — and we’re skip­ping the Cra­dle Moun­tain and Launce­s­ton legs of our orig­i­nal plan (which com­ple­ment­ed Danielle’s Hobart-bred antipa­thy towards Launce­s­ton 🤣). We’re still using the same Hema map of Tassie (ours is 10th ed.), and we’ve con­densed the ride to about 10–11 days’ rid­ing in total.

Divider illustration

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less trav­elled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost
‘The Road Not Tak­en’ (excerpt)

A broad outline of the trip

  • Devonport

    Catch­ing the Spir­it of Tas­ma­nia from Gee­long to Devon­port, arriv­ing in the evening and stay­ing at the Abel Tas­man Car­a­van Park.

  • Exeter

    We will ride from Devon­port across to Exeter, pass­ing the for­est reserves on our way east to the Tamar River.

  • George Town

    From Exeter we’ll vis­it some of the Tamar Val­ley winer­ies on our way to George Town.

  • Bridport

    From George Town we’ll ride past more winer­ies on our way to Brid­port on Bass Strait.

  • Binalong, Bay of Fires

    Rid­ing from Brid­port through Scotts­dale, Der­by, and on to Bina­long via St Helens, we’ll be weav­ing through the for­est reserves in North East Tas­ma­nia, which I’ve nev­er vis­it­ed but heard a lot about, camp­ing at the Bay of Fires.

  • Bicheno

    Now hug­ging the coast through Sca­man­der to Bicheno. I’m keen on Bicheno as a fabled fish­ing destination.

  • Freycinet N.P.

    From Bicheno we’ll ride down to a lux­u­ry stay at Freycinet Lodge at Coles Bay, and spend a day to check out the Nation­al Park and Wine­glass Bay.

  • Maria Island

    Danielle adores wom­bats. We could­n’t do the trip with­out a detour to Maria Island. We’ll stop near Triabunna/Orford and catch the fer­ry across for a few days camp­ing on the island.

  • Dunalley and Richmond

    Skip­ping Port Arthur — we’ve been plen­ty of times before — we’ll mean­der around via Dunal­ley and Dodges Fer­ry to Rich­mond. If we feel like it we’ll stop for the night in Rich­mond, oth­er­wise we’ll press on the last 30-odd kilo­me­tres to…

  • Hobart

    Fin­ish­ing in Hobart, we’re plan­ning to arrive on 23 Decem­ber then stay with the folks at Sandy Bay for Christmas.

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Pho­to of Cloudy Bay head­land by Stephen Mabbs on Unsplash. Pho­to of cyclist on switch­back by Beardy McBeard (I think), used by Dar­ryl from Lov­ing The Bike, repro­duced here with­out permission.

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