Recce Trip Day 3, Coleraine to Melbourne

This sort of map was transferred to my phone for navigation.

Wind blew my bike over near Mount Napier.

Mount Napier road out of Hamilton

T was windy and wet riding through the Macarthur wind farm.

 

This is near the top of the big hill out of Coleraine, by far the biggest hill of the day.

(Continued from Here )

The last day of my Rrecce trip to Coleraine was the trip back to Coleraine. I was hemming and hawing about whether to ride back to Ararat, or even whether to ride through Merino to get to Warrnambool and take the train from there. In the end I decided to go via a bike friendly route to Warrnambool and catch the train. I researched the route with my Chromebook laptop and didn't use any gps guidance, just marked my intended route in my map book, and photographed the various maps using my phone. When I was riding I just referred to my phone pictures which was easy. It was sometimes wild, wet and windy weather, but the wind was northwesterly and basically a tailwind the whole way - about 120k I think. 

The small town of Hawksdale was on my route. Its main shop is a post office and milk bar and I replenished supplies there - mainly with something to drink as my bottle was empty. 

I got into Warrnambool with about 2 hours before the train left, and was happy  to sit around and read and wait. This last train to Melbourne for the evening was busy but not crowded. I switched trains in Melbourne and arrived home about 9:30