June 16th, 2011
Albany to Denmark
Distance: 62km
Total distance: 5734km
Woke up to the uplifting tune of The Who’s Baba O’Riley playing from the cafe/hotel downstairs. The combined effect of this and the strong smell of coffee gave me an instant mental boost. Can’t think of anymore uplifting way to start my day!
A quick goodbye to the hostel folks and I’m off. The weather for the next 7 days doesn’t seem promising but still I must ride on. Used the Lower Denmark Road instead of the highway for its lighter traffic. Horse farms are quite a typical scenery here in this part of WA. The road was relatively flat and straight. But as soon as I rejoined the highway, the flat road was gone. The short undulations made my speed dropped significantly, at times riding at only 4km/h. I also received a significant amount of showers and headwinds just as I expected.
Guess what I spotted about 10km to Denmark? A rail trail! I wasn’t aware of any rail trail in WA other than the famous Munda Biddi Trail. Like almost all rail trails in Australia, it is unsealed but from the look of it, it’s quite rideable for my trike. So I went ahead and rode for 1km before deciding the road was too unfit for a trike. Twigs got stucked on my steering rod and I had to literally ride over 1m-tall scrubs under my two front wheels. The only thing capable of surviving this trail is a mountain bike. Rode back to the highway feeling quite disappointed, oh well.
I reached Denmark pretty exhausted and wet. Denmark itself sits on a slope and there was a significant climb to the town centre and the hostel where I’m staying. The hostel was really quiet. Graham, the hostel manager mentioned that a cyclist from Japan stayed here last night and just left this morning heading to Albany. He probably used the highway so that’s why I missed him, damn! Chatted with the only two other guests, Karen and Corinna, both from Germany. Since we both travelled from the opposite direction, we exchanged and shared about places to visit. They camp most of the time so they recommended me a few great places to camp, but I doubt I’ll be doing any camping considering the weather has been quite wet and will be so in the next few days. They also informed me that I am likely to bump into two cyclists travelling in the opposite direction soon! I spent most of my evening reading the most relevant book I’ve a come across in my tour: Lonely Planet’s Cycling in Australia. While reading it, I keep asking myself why didn’t I get this book before the start of the tour.
