Mundaring to Cottesloe 2003

Mundaring to Cottesloe, day 11, Thursday 23 October 2003. After a leisurely breakfast in bed watching Rugrats I ventured out with my camera to get some better orchid pictures. I tramped around for a while and found more and better orchids, more fully open. They were most prolific. I seemed to have come here at just about the perfect time.

Cottesloe

As a bonus, when I finally walked back along the track to the bit of fence where I could climb back into the motel grounds, I passed another orchid that I hadn’t noticed on the way out. But this was a variant! The structure was the same but the petals were purple and pointed instead of blue with rounded ends, and the ‘tongue’ was bright yellow instead of dull mauve.

I was getting ready to leave at about 9:30 when the lady came and unlocked the door and walked in. ‘What’, I said, not meaning to be rude but a bit startled. She was startled too and said she thought I was gone. Not yet, I said, I had been out looking for orchids, but I was nearly ready to go.

I wobbled carefully over the crumbled gravel and rolled out of the motel grounds at 9:40, 1398.5. As I approached the last rise before the steep descent starts, at Bilgoman Road, I spied something blue on my left. I stopped a little further up and came back, and yes, there was a rare blue sun orchid, with about 14 flowers fully or partly open, sticking up bold as you like in the gravel right beside the road! This was about 9 kilometres from the motel, so they must not be confined to that site, but must be all over the area!

I moved on, came to the top of the rise (1408) and started the steep descent down the notorious Greenmount Hill. I think I have got a bit more timid with age, so although I didn’t brake for the six and a half kilometres of the descent, I didn’t pedal either, just rolling down and hanging on. Had I pedalled I might have gone faster than the 58 kph I achieved. The winds were favourable, though light.

I felt the road level out beneath the bike in the vicinity of the Darling Range lodge, at 1414, and resumed pedalling into Midland. I reached the station a 10:20, 1417.

The ’03 ride ended as I dismounted the bike outside Midland train station, to take the train back home to Cottesloe.

Final reading at end of ride: 1417 km. Km for day: 19. Aggregate: 586. Kpd: 53. Kph to Midland: 28.

Mundaring to Cottesloe 2003

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