Climbing Mt Cotton

With quite a lot of pfaffing around this morning, I eventually loaded Nellie onto Rosie's rack and we drove out to Redland Bay - taking the long way, with a bit of zigging and zagging around!

Arrived at starting point

I had spent an hour trying to set up the gps before leaving - and eventually gave up and decided to wing it.

So from Redland Bay, I headed out along Double Jump Road.  The name should have warned me, but I straggled along climbing up the double jumps, several in fact, not just one!

Good shoulder

No Shoulder

Broken road edge

The traffic was not heavy but fairly constant and the shoulder on the road disappeared off and on.  The gps was looking good, so I continued along, dodging onto West Mt Cotton.

Nice place to stop for morning tea -

At the top of Mt Cotton

Its quite a pretty ride, lined with straggly forests of casuarinas and eucalyptus.  There is also a lot of weeds - lantana, singapore daisy, guavas growing wide - very tasty tho!

from the top 

Mt Cotton beat me tho'.  I came screaming down a hill (max speed 52.3kph!) dodging a pothole, slight corner and then faced with a wall of a road - looked like a 90% incline!!  I started to madly click down to granny gear and panicked as I was clicked into the pedals - I was quickly grinding to halt!  it wasn't going to be pretty - but thankfully, no traffic and a driveway on the right, so I zinked horizontally and was able to unclick and get off to catch my breath.  The wall was still there, so I plodded slowly up to the top, stopping to munch on the aforementioned quavas!

Cable Ski Park

I came across Carbrook on the Logan River - both places I didn't know existed - and dodged into the Cable Ski Park - another new thing for me - so had some lunch and watched the young lads being dragged around on cables, practising their water skiing skills.  Saw a couple of spectacular falls, one young lad doing such a classic belly flop I was cranky I didn't catch it on camera.  The pulling system made only a buzzing noise, so much nicer than roaring speed boats.  Logan river was a sleepy river - even a nice little house boat for sale!

Tough skier

Logan River down-river

Logan River upstream

I managed to stay in the saddle for the rest of the ride, getting slightly lost as usual, but I eventually arrived back in Redland Bay, dodging around in the suburbs, finding bike tracks, including another vertical climb and eventually finding dear Rosie waiting patiently - and unlocked as I had feared!  but no worries!

Preening Pelicans

Looking over to North Stradbrooke Island

All in all, a typical ride around on Queensland roads - no shoulder, broken edges and cranky drivers.  I witnessed one young lad come flying around the corner towards me, the back wheels skidding out but thankfully he managed to get it back on track - for the time being.

This was a good ride for practising riding with cleats.  Plenty of space for just pedalling along, but there were intersections where I had to think about clicking in or out.


Stats for this ride:  2:43 hours actual riding, 45.3km (my total is now 10749), clocking up a max of 52.3kph and an average of 16.6kph.  I managed to be clipped into the cleats the majority of time, just clicking out when needing to stop for traffic intersections and the horror hill climb.