I Walk Up Hills

We had lunch with family in Mount Barker.

"I'll ride my bicycle home from Mount Barker," I thought.  "Mount Barker is higher than Strathalbyn, so it will be a cruisy downhill ride."

I mapped out a route that avoided main roads and off I went.  Mount Barker had a surprisingly comprerhensive network of bicycle trails so I didn't have to go on the road until I reached the edge of town.

Bye bye urban riding.  Hello country lanes.

 

As I pedaled off along my desired network of quiet country roads I came slowly to the disturbing realisation that an awful lot of up was squeezed into my nice little downhill ride.  

The camera lies.  It was steeper than it looks, promise.

 

I personally blamed the pesky Bugle Ranges, sitting between Mount Barker and Strathalbyn, for all the plodding that I did while pushing my bicycle up hill on my downhill ride. To add insult to injury, the beautiful dappled shadows on the road camouflaged the potholes and corrugations, so there were no glorious zooming downhills but rather a cautious clatter over rocks, holes, and corrugations that lurked to catch me out.

Careful now.

 

Up I went.  Gradually the uphills got shorter and flatter, the downhills longer.  I turned off my nasty corrugated track onto a smoother road, albeit still gravel and still uphill. 

And then came the reward.

Lake Alexandrina away in the distance.

 

The road curved eastwards, turning the previously bothersome breeze into an appreciated tailwind.  I stopped to photograph sweeping views out to Lake Alexandrina, with dams and horses posing prettily in the foreground. 

 

I shared a stretch of bitumen with too many cars on the way into Macclesfield, where I replenished my hill-plodding energies with chocolate.  I liked Macclesfield until it presented a nasty uphill on the way out of town, up which I yet again had to plod.  Then I forgave Macclesfield as it delivered 8km of downhill all the way to Strathalbyn, most of it just the right incline such that I could float around corners while watching the view and saying hello to cattle without having to worry about excessive speed and the integrity of my squeaking brakes. Even the bitumen bits had a (mostly) decent shoulder so what traffic there was zoomed right on past with neither of us getting hot and bothered about the other. 

Bovine buddy number 1.

And number two.

Vineyard views.

Strathalbyn was visible down in the valley.

The final plod along the (very slightly) uphill bike path back to my front door was confronting to my tired legs.  But I pedaled the whole way, because I was a 'real' cyclist, not one of those counterfeits scorned by the Lycra People for walking up hills.

Who was I kidding?

I walk up hills. And I'm proud of it.

See?  Lots of uphill!