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The Date: March 12th 2005
The Time: 7.30am
The Place: Mt Lofty Car Park
This was the setting for the Mountains to the Sea: A Cycle Challenge. A 52km bike ride through the Adelaide Hills, down along the Linear Park and ending up at Apex Park, West Beach. Kintaro Venturers were very keen to do the “Crafers run”, riding their bikes down
from Crafers turnoff and down towards Glen Osmond Road…but there was nowhere to go at the end , and we didn’t savour the idea of going down through the city back to our Scout Hall at Pennington. Paul Ware (PC for Caving) came up with a fantastic trek for us, still getting that downhill
excitement that the Venturers were craving, but making it all that little bit safer, keeping us to mostly unused roads and then the bike track.
It was a warm day, estimated to be in the 30s for the day. But despite the early start and the warm temperature we had 47 riders turn up. They were Venturers from Kintaro, Blackhawks, 2nd Adelaide, Hallet Cove, Reynella, Rowallan, Fullarton, Centennial Park, Rovers from GRovers and a handful of leaders from around the place as well.
Unfortunately I did not think to cover every corner (I had printed off and laminated maps, but of course it is hard to read maps when riding) and a small group of riders took the wrong turn at a corner. No fear though, Kate from Reynella Venturers found them quite quickly after they made the wrong turn, and we met them again half way into the trek… mental note to self: remember arrows at every corner and intersection.
Fruit and muesli bars were available at the halfway point (who would have thought plums would have been so popular!) and we provided a Sausage Sizzle at the end for lunch, thanks to Stuey from Aesir and Clare from PFRC for cooking lunch for us.
The ride was fantastic, and incident free (except for one certain venturer who shall remain nameless, as she skidded her bike whilst dodging butterflies – we are still trying to work that one out) and we have had lots of requests to run another metropolitan bike ride, so our thinking caps are on and a new event will be run soon. If Units have any ideas on where they may like to go, drop me a line, any suggestions are gratefully accepted.
Kylie Moore
