Salt Pans to St Kilda

Living the deprived life as I was, without wine or chocolate, I decided to make the most of the nice(ish) weather and go for a bicycle ride on one of my work-free days.  Having ridden up and down the beach front to the point of tedium, I decided to take myself off to St Kilda instead.  This involved an argument with the Adelaide Metro website which neglected to tell me that the trains to Gawler had been replaced by buses on the very day on which I planned to use the train to launch me on my journey.  Having set my heart on St Kilda I caught the train to Port Adelaide instead, and rode from there.

Great excitement! A vintage train chugging to its new home at the Railway Museum in Port Adelaide! And to think I usually zip across those tracks without even looking...

Riding from Port Adelaide was all new territory for me, so at least it was a novelty even if it wasn't very pretty.

Firstly a charming cycle beside the freeway. At least, being a Sunday, the traffic was light.

Secondly a meander away from the freeway across swamp and wetland.

Meandering across the wetlands wasn't as good as it sounded (or looked) as it took me disturbingly close to the rubbish dump and however bad you imagine it smelled, it was worse.  Not to mention the foul water puddled in the table drain between me and the road.  Purely by coincidence, I achieved my highest average speed along this section of cycle path which would be forever known in my mind as Poo Alley.

They don't care.

Not far past Poo Alley I came upon an intersection and took a path which wandered beguilingly under the freeway and off across the blurred edge between the sea and the flat salt pans that morphed into the Bolivar waste water treatment works. I left the noisy traffic behind and entered a parallel universe where gravel crunched under my tyres, a gentle wind pushed me along, the salt pans bloomed with algael colour, and fantastical salt sculptures blossomed on the bones of old fence posts and poles.

The northern suburbs of Adelaide lay out of sight beyond the water treatment works.

The industrial areas of Port Adelaide were still visible across the salt, the mangroves, and the upper reaches of Barker Inlet.

Onward to St Kilda!

Adelaide Hills behind me,

and Adelaide City visible across the salt beside me.

Last salt photo, I promise.

 

At the end of the salt pans I discovered that, while entry to the path had been open from my end, the exit was blocked by locked gates and signs promising dire retribution should the public (aka people like me) be so evil as to wander out on the salt. The locked gates lacked a certain effectiveness without a firmly attached fence, and by dint of a little clambering and mud-puddling I emerged onto the outskirts of St Kilda where I attempted to look as if I had of course ridden all the way there on the boring bitumen.

Now I'm just a wee bit paranoid... did someone see me emerge from the forbidden salt pans?

 

St Kilda Adelaide possessed none of the charms of its siblings in Melbourne or Sydney.  In fact, it possessed little in the way of anything bar a marina, a kiosk, a very large car park, a historic tram, and the very best playground in all of Adelaide with hordes of children and families making the most of it.

There was a castle,

and a slide mountain, and a net thingy.  And I haven't shown you the pirate ship (at water's edge, so inundated on high tide) or the oh-so-tempting flying fox.

There was screaming and yelling (both joyful and of the tantrum variety), jumping and sliding, and lots of ice creams being dropped in sand.  In weather that would have had Queenslanders huddled round their heaters, Adelaide popped on their puffer jackets and took their children out to play.

The tide was out.

 

I only stopped at St Kilda long enough to have lunch at the kiosk. The wind was cold, all the seating was outside, and I knew the ride back would take longer because a) I couldn't pretend that I didn't know about the dire warnings against cutting through the salt pans and b) the wind would be against me on the way home.

Go away, silver gull.  I know how this works.  If I feed you anything a thousand of your relatives will turn up and demand more.

 

The freeway accompanied me all the way back to Port Adelaide, with a little detour along the Para river offering a short reprieve from the traffic noise. 

Last moment of peace on the Para River Bikeway.

 

I stopped at the last lookout and drank my iced coffee before facing the final slog past Poo Alley and back to the railway station. Had I been a purist I would have ridden home along the Greenway but my legs were tired, the wind was cold, and I wanted to relax in the train carriage before I had to get off and trundle the last 7 km back to the cat.

Alright, let's get the stinky bit over with then.

 

Back home the cat demanded penance which I was happy to pay.  There were worse ways to end the day than to relax in a comfy chair, reading a good book, with a warm cat sleeping in my lap and hot chocolate to hand.