July 22nd.
The Bae chair has finally
arrived the main problem seemed to be the customs in Sidney who held
it for nine days before releasing it because they thought it had
drugs in it! They are now holding the Fujitsu laptop and refusing to
release it unless we give them a resident fixed address... the case
continues...
Having done two days P.R.
work ,stocking the food cupboards and general 'fix its' to the
cycles and chasing missing post we were up bright and early to do
some filming with the BBC in and around Alice Springs before we met
the
Mayor for a
send off from Adelaide House. The BBC, ABC and Imparja (Channel
Eight News) were all in attendance.
We made our way out of the city and had travelled 6 miles
when I had my second puncture in as many days, the tyres are
obviously getting near to the end of their life and ready for a
change.
We set off once again and for
once the usually now straight road took a sharp turn to the right
,the wind had been strong since leaving Alice Springs, but was now
straight in our faces. The day was going to be hard with no give
,even though the road was to be flatter than usual.
The scenery changed today
becoming more barren in places at times but looking very much like
the Lowlands of Scotland, leaving the cold wind to embrace us even
more. We have noticed more wildlife than of late, wild 'ferral'
ponies and cattle. There have been an abundance of Eagles flying
above our heads - a wondrous sight -they were after the fresh road
kill.
We covered 63.5 miles in less
than 5 hours despite the cold winds and averaged 13.9 mph to finish
9 miles south of 'Jim's Place' at Stuarts Well, which was yet another
roadhouse consisting of a petrol station, cafe and caravan site
behind it. We returned to Jim's Place to spend the night before more
filming with the BBC and were called upon by the
District
Governor
of the Lions Club who was surprised that we had made so much
ground.
Tomorrow we will be setting
off down the highway towards Erldunda, Desert Oaks where we will turn
off and head west for one night to stay at Ayres Rock on Friday to
do some final filming and return to Erlunda on Saturday evening.
Sunday it will be all systems go when we start our charge towards
Coober Pedy.
July 24th
Today was a very long day
filming with the BBC, but we travelled south to Kulgera during a
cold and blustery day,. This made the day feel longer and the whole
team is feeling very lethargic on the whole.
July 26th.
We have made very good ground today and probably had the
best day of the journey.
The day started with a change in the wind ,which turned
NE instead of the usual Southerly head on wind that we have faced so
far since leaving Darwin. Also the roads were more favourable than
recently. This helped to make good
progress from the beginning
and we clocked 18.2. miles in the first hour and another 18.5 in the
second hour. I clocked 1 hr 25 mins and 25 secs for the marathon
distance. We covered 91.8 miles to finish North of a place called
Marla.
