2013 Chain Reaction Charity Ride – Day 3

2013 Chain Reaction Charity Ride Day 3 arrives with some quietly ominous looking clouds.

And it is BRISK.

Best breakfast of the trip, with croissants close to being as good as French ones (maybe with 70%, which is about as good as it gets in Australia).

The riders head off from Milawa toward delightful Beechworth.

Managing school traffic into Beechworth is pretty easy and we arrive in chilly Beechworth for a flying drink stop.

Beechworth is pretty; even in such dreary conditions the Autumnal reds, oranges and yellows are such a lovely compromise to the approaching and already obvious starkness of winter.

Off we go, via Yackandandah, some angry truck drivers (admittedly on a tight schedule to the cattle sales), via Tallangatta for lunch (where my grandfather was born and grew up) and for the final stretch to Corryong.

The riders are given free reign on the old rail trail around Lake Hume where we have some fun covering flats.

…Lakey had to ride his Specialized Epic on a flat tyre in with some spares
…I had to jump some barbed wire fences with some spares

It seemed as soon as we covered on flat, there was another up the road.

Corryong is super pretty with the same reds, oranges and yellows dotting the countryside, along with maroons on maples.

Dinner is a fairly spartan affair, with Lakey eschewing the plain and honest fare for a rib eye.

One fairly interesting thing was when we headed down to the local laundromat to wash the riders' gear and we met a local old fella, Julius, told us all about his past in the Slovakian (Czechoslovakian) army, working in Woomera and a lot more.

Everyone hits the sack early for a big day up the Snowys.

Sunrise over Milawa

Rail traila long Lake Hume

Lakey riding spares into the group (on a flat tyre)

Yours truly jumping fences

Corryong