Our Wellington experience was lovely: Hermitage Hill Retreat an old hospital converted into hotel/convention centre, up high overlooking the town. We were in the old nurses’ quarters, end room with a lovely terrace looking over towards the town. Wellington itself, especially from where we entered had a pretty run-down look. We later learned that there was a lot of unemployment and crime there … Breakfast was nice, but a bit mingy, we thought, especially for the price … but such is life. It went down well regardless. We ate at 8am and left pretty promptly. Went to Coles to get lunch things and I chatted to some other cyclists while Christian went in to get things. Then we set off and discovered the other side of Wellington, which was lovely with some nice old houses and a couple of lovely churches. The ride down to Gulgong was 70km, so a reasonably hard day ahead. We set off following the highway, past the massive solar farm, but there was quite a bit of traffic so we checked the alternative – longer – route via 12 Mile Rd through beautiful farming countryside. The road was bitumen for a while but soon turned to gravel for most of the rest of the day. But it was relatively good gravel compared to some of the others, and there was very little traffic, so we weren’t complaining … For lunch we stopped at an old closed pub, really not much more than a house with a terrace and sat outside chatting to the publican and his wife. They had closed the place at the beginning of the COVID epidemic in March and seemed to be having a pretty hard time of things. Both quite old, in their seventies … After a short lunch break we went to the bikes only to hear my rear tube suddenly start leaking at the valve. It was quite extraordinary … We stopped it and pumped it up, but within a couple of hundred metres it was flat again. Upended the bike and took off the wheel, checked the tyre and found a nail through the side. Fixed that and solved the puzzle of the tube: when the tube was at high pressure, the hole by the valve closed over; as soon as the pressure reduced, though, the valve started to leak again. The nail had reduced the pressure, opening the valve. This solved the conundrum of that tube which had suddenly deflated after four days unused in the garage the week before … The rest of the ride was relatively easy through lovely countryside and we came into Gulgong from the south-west to the Ten Dollar Motel, which is very good value. Champagne and bikkies came out and we celebrated the end of the hard riding. Dinner was at the pub again, not all that good, but it was a lovely night nevertheless. We were tired – as usual – and had an early night, falling asleep to a documentary about a murderer …
