25/09/21 Of Campground Showers and Rail Trails: Melrose

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How to Have A Shower in the Melrose Showgrounds:

1. Collect all your goods and chattels and decide which shower block you will use. There is a choice of three: the little tiny one which a caravan has claimed as its own personal ensuite and parked so close you will trip over their doorstep to get in; the old one which is... old; the new one which opened for business yesterday and is spacious, squeaky clean, and new.

2. Decide to go to the new block and hike over there: it's a bit of a walk around the cricket oval. Get there and discover you've lost your toothbrush. Grieve the end of a beautiful relationship that had barely begun: you only bought that toothbrush 3 days ago in Port Augusta and now it's gone.

3. Clean your teeth with your finger (and toothpaste, you're not a savage!). While you are doing this your clean clothes will slide off the bench and onto the floor. You won't notice.

4. Go to the showers. Discover that the new showers are poorly designed, so all the water pools outside the cubicle where you would normally stand to dress/undress. Decide to shower in the old shower block.

5. Get naked in the old shower block. Realise your clean clothes are missing. Debate the merits of showering anyway and just putting your skanky thermal underwear, in which you've slept for the last forever*, back on your clean body. Don't debate for too long; there was ice on the tent this morning and it's cold in the old shower block.

6. Put on your skanky thermals and go back to the new shower block. Pick up your clothes which, having now been on the floor, are redefining the term 'clean'. Plod back to the old shower block.

7. Shower. Get dressed, discovering damp bits on your 'clean' clothes. Hike back around the cricket oval to your camp. Rejoice to find your toothbrush in the driver's seat of the car and put it safely in your toiletries bag for next time. Sit in the sun to dry the damp bits on your clean clothes.

*To be clear, our laundry is done once a week(ish).  Skanky is as skanky does.

Time to move on from shower lessons.

Showered and suitably dressed (clean or otherwise), with our teeth brushed, we sallied forth on the Melrose-Wilmington Rail Trail (MWRT). 

The beginning of the trail, just outside of Wilmington.

This being South Australia, t'was not long before rocks made an appearance.
 

Roger started in Melrose and rode north while I drove to Wilmington and rode south.  The wind blew very strongly from the south, with the result that Roger raved about the fast surface of the trail, the beautiful scenery, and the efficacy of his sparkly tape in deterring magpie attacks. He was back in camp in no time at all, relaxing with his ritual cup of tea. 

 

Sparkly tape is the latest in thing for deterring swooping magpies whilst riding rail trails and mountai bike tracks.  I think this is all a front for men who never got to put tassels on their handlebars when they were little fellas,  and are now making up for this loss.

Meanwhile I ground into a freezing head wind, muttering bad things about the soft gravel surface and the lack of trees (aka wind protection), and being regularly overtaken by disgustingly youthful MTBers whose legs weren't tired from climbing Mt Remarkable yesterday.  At least the magpies ignored me, probably because their vision was still recovering after being dazzled by some idiot invading their territory with a helmet full of sparkly tape.

Despite the muttering I enjoyed the vistas of the wheat,

...and the canola crops,


...and Mount Remarkable.

After lunch and a recovery snooze in the tent we headed in to Melrose, ostensibly to check out the town but we all know the real purpose was to get some of those cheese tree questions answered.

Once a flour mill, then a brewery, about to be an 'events facility'.  Melrose has some fine old stone buildings

I don't know who Joe was, but he has a road as well as a corner in Melrose.

 
Melrose has a happening bike shop/cafe.  Om nom nom.

The tree, I hear you ask.  What about the cheese tree?  Well, we arrived at the Melrose Museum with 5 minutes to go until closing time, and that 5 minutes was spent in earnest discussion regarding cheese trees and their place in the history of Melrose.  You will have to wait for the details but rest assured that patience is a virtue, and I promise your curiosity relating to the cheese tree will be satisfied tomorrow.


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