Seeking Hyde!

Thursday 17 July

Had a tough night in Kokonga - every vent and cracked open window on Banjo let in the smoky aroma of the nearby bonfire, the temperatures plummeted to below zero and the fan heater fought a valiant but noisy battle to keep us warm.

So after a bit of a recovery lie in 🦁 and scrambled eggs for breakfast, we sorted the bikes and a picnic and hit the rail trail again, this time heading about 15km down the track towards Hyde. Paused first to meet Wanda who was a rather adorable Lakeland Terrier (though she didn't sell any kitchen goodies!)

It was a cool section of track running alongside the Taieri River, with several bridges (notably Capburn built in 1897 and the Prices Creek Viaduct which was used until at least 1966) and a tunnel - plus a variety of livestock along the way.

However Hyde was a tad disappointing (everything was closed, some places permanently) so we had a mooch around, sat by the gate and had our picnic before cycling back to base (up hill much of the way and into the wind - quite tough even with the eBikes).

The Prices Creek Tunnel was very cool and apparently has a little sibling down in the valley which the river was directed through in the gold mining days.

Had a chat with our host Colleen and secured a couple of bottles of water from her sink as the outdoor tap by Banjo was still iced solid! It’s been a difficult few days for water as there have been “boil water” notices at most of the places we have passed through so our tanks were getting low and my drinking water bottles were empty. I had to resort to emptying the hot water bottles into a pan, boiling the water on the hob and then refilling them!

Had a chill evening, failed to start the diesel heater, switched off the water pump, drained the water pipes and snuggled up in bed with the refilled hottie bottles to stay warm. The weather app said we’d be down to -3*C overnight… it turned out to be -9.2*C! No wonder the diesel heater packed a sad!