Hennie and me off to Queenstown

my new companion, Hennie has been doing all the hard work - and its the first major trip we have been on together...  so how is it all going?  well, we are best friends!  sure, she's a bit heavier than Maggie, but the extra low gears mean I can just crawl along even as low as 3.5km/hr!!  But the main difference I feel, is the steadiness on the downhill swoops!  yes, there has been some downhills!!  She feels so steady - at maximums around 50kph, she just sits heavy on the road...  nice!!

and today there was actually lots of downs but some ups of course!!!  and only 45km so I ended up in Queenstown by 1pm.  Once up the hill to get out of Strahan, the sunshine continued along with me and soon I was in the forests, listening again to a myriad of birds and thinking of West Coast of NZ - very similar - ground oozing with water with a variety of croaking frogs.

OK - it does seem like I have been whinging a fair bit about these hills...  and I have been hitting a fair few of them, which feels pretty good - but as always, the hard ones make me swear and cuss!

I have been advised by several people now, of the day ahead...  the 85km steep climb from Queenstown to Derwent River Bridge - its back on the A10 highway, narrow without much shoulder and more traffic, includes more trucks - and its up up up!!

so first thing I did today was to ring TassieLink - and buy a bus ticket from Queenstown to Derwent River Bridge...  yep I probably wont make my Great Cycle Challenge of 1000km for October, but maybe I will get fairly close anyways!

I am sure this is the pub that we stayed in 1966 - now left to fall apart :(