Beriault Bicycle Camper – Trip 3 – Day 1

It was time for a trip to Liffey Falls in the Tasmanian Great Western Tiers.

The above Ride with GPS detail is from my 2020 ride. I didn’t use the app on this ride to save phone battery power because there are no charging facilities at the Falls campsite; nor would there be a phone signal. My 7 watt USB solar charger is quite slow so I didn’t want to rely on it to keep the phone awake for podcast / book work in the evening.

The Plan

We planned to head up to the Liffey Falls campsite and spend 2 nights in the peaceful environment up there. Colin was after time to do some sketching and I had an idea of walking up to the Falls in the World Heritage area.

The Execution of the Plan – Day 1

The weather report wasn’t too good. There is a huge High directing south-easterly winds over us with expected speeds up to 40 kph for the next two days. Luckily the associated rain isn’t falling here – Victoria and southern Tasmania will cop it. Today the wind was mostly at our backs – so something to enjoy. Coming up from the south though it had a bit of an edge!

We made our way out of Longford and along Wilmore’s Lane. All the hills were taken slowly with us putting in a fair amount of leg work to lessen strain on the bike batteries. There would be no charging at the camp so they had to last all the way back too. We decided we don’t have “range anxiety”, we do “range management”.

At the top of Wilmores we joined Bishopsbourne Road at the roadworks. All the new road base has been added plus the top layer of finer gravel. It is now being “flattened” and compacted by traffic for a few days so there were no pieces of yellow machinery on the road, no flashing lights, no stop-go persons – just a long stretch of smoothish dry gravel. All good.

There were, however, signs advising of new roadworks. This one was OK; we weren’t going that way. The second indicated there were traffic restrictions during bridge repairs on Liffey Road. What would that mean to us?, that was the question we couldn’t answer yet.

We rolled along at an easy pace but I soon lost sight of Colin in the mirrors. Assuming he was taking it easy, supplementing his battery, I continued at my comfortable pace until reaching Bracknell, where I pulled in at the riverside picnic grounds to wait for him. Initially I rode up to the back of the reserve and checked out the river for fish – none seen. Then I rode back down to the picnic shelter where a couple were loading water into their caravan. We had a chat and several minutes later Colin arrived confirming all was OK he was just taking it easy.

I swapped batteries here. Both were charged to full this morning and I wanted to bring both off full during the ride so they are not stressed.

We rolled up and out of Bracknell. To our right it looked like quite a bit of bush has been pulled out to make room for dairy cattle.

At the back there were already cows munching away. I know farming is necessary but this change hits the climate in two ways. First, the carbon stored in the trees and roots will end up in the atmosphere; Second, a carbon store is being replaced by methane burping cattle!

Cattle burp methane can even be seen from space! Check out the CNN story here: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/30/us/cow-burps-methane-space-climate-trnd/index.html

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/30/us/cow-burps-methane-space-climate-trnd/index.html

These can both be off-set by planting new trees and by feeding the cattle seaweed or one of several pills produced to fix the problem.

Check the sky in the above two pictures. Yesterday it looked like it would be pretty wet up at Liffey but today the sky had gradually improved as we travelled. Good.

It was now time to start our climb up the valley. First we rode through more picturesque farmland and then the road enters a narrower valley with bush on one side and the Liffey River on the other. Very nice.

Where things narrowed the riverbanks showed signs of recent floods.

The bridge works were happening but didn’t affect us. I think it’s mostly finished.

However, we saw the river was a mucky colour and it stayed that way for a while. If anyone is pulling out this water for irrigation I bet it plays havoc with the filters. A few kilometres further on we found the cause – there was a large backhoe type thing in the river moving the rocks about. It looks like the river bank protecting gabions fitted after the 2016 floods have caused further problems downriver which is being fixed up by the backhoe.

A Ride from December 2017

Above the great yellow machine stirring up the mud, the river ran true and clear.

It was time to really start climbing now and we were both in low gears using as little pedal assist as we could. I was at level 3, then 4 alternating between the two as appropriate. Colin had to select the one he would stick with as he can’t swap between levels at whim like I can. The road changed to a gravel surface and rear tyre spin began. No matter, on we climbed managing the conditions as best we could until we had pedalled our slipping trikes plus campers to the top.

Then it was time for the gravel hill descent. My brakes held OK but now there was slippage of a different kind – front wheel skids! Going down was better than I had anticipated with less skid dragging from side to side and the speed could be held down to a reasonable, non-scary level. Behind me Colin’s rig also handled the descent well.

Colin’s real trouble began when we were riding the last bit of gravel into the camp site. There were a couple of climbs on the entry and he found the trike losing grip so much there was no forward momentum. Eventually a good line in the gravel was found and he went past me – only to then be tailed by a large people mover with a very wide trailer behind.

We went past their campsite just outside the reserve and the trailer was a strange looking thing. The next day we saw that the trailer was a home for dogs and cats! No pets are allowed in the reserve for obvious reasons so they had camped just outside. We hope nothing escapes from the trailer.

We chose our site, set up camp and started a round of tea brewing and drinking. Thirsty work this triking!

For tea we had kebabs cooked on the briquette burning Firebox stove and after that it was getting darker and cooler so we retired to our campers to get out of the wind and do some reading. Currently re-reading Iain M Banks, Excession. How did he imagine the whole Culture environment and the story lines ?!

Stay following – the next episode will come in a couple of days.

For now though – Day 1 – the video