Cycle Touring- Cootamudra to Cootamundra March 2015

Spent the last week on holidays riding with friends around the Riverina with friends. Had a great time. We started and finished at Cootamundra.
Day 1- Cootamundra to Temora- 55km- hot and windy- hard work!
Day 2 Temora to Narranderra- 125km- cool and showery to start, warmed up as day progressed. Lots of head winds and quite a few dirt sections- glad to get into town- on the road from 8am to 5:30pm!
Day 3 Narranderra to Wagga Wagga 100km- cool start but nice weather, cross winds and headwinds
Day 4 Wagga to Junee 65 km- sunny but cool day, windy- cross and tail
Day 5 Junee to Cootamundra- 68 km- cool, sunny and tail winds!

 Day 1 on the road to Temora, bikes all loaded up! Lots of land out there in NSW!

 Morning Tea stop- food tasted so good when riding!

 My bike all loaded up and ready to go!

 Loved travelling down roads I had never been before and places I had never heard of either.

 Had quite a few dirt and gravel roads to negotiate, our naviagators got us there safely every day!

 Grong Grong, Wagga Wagga- all these double names!

 First challenge each morning was to find the local bakery- sampled hot cross buns from 4 bakeries along the way- always good riding food for me! It was a chilly start around 4 degrees!

 About to take the back road to Wagga Wagga

 First 25km  to Wagga were nice and flat- often had the Murrimbidgee in sight!

 Time for a photo by the river with my trusty stead!

 It seems we were always passing signs to Grong Grong- will have to see if there is anything there one day!

 Lovely green gardens at Wagga Wagga- rest of the country was pretty dry!

 Memorial to the soldiers in Wagga

 Lovely on hotel at Junee- a really nice town with lovely buildings

 Early morning shot of the Catholic Church- another chilly start

 Lots of typical Australian country roads

Loved the signs! On our way to Cootamundra- a day of many tail winds!

Had a great time, good country pub food for dinner, something from the local bakery for morning tea! Life was simple, get to your hotel, eat something, shower, wash your clothes for the next day, find a place for dinner, pack up your belongings for the next day! Had a great time- my first touring ride and just loved it.

Charlie and Mia Come to Visit

Bindi is away so we invited Mia and Charlie over for the weekend to give Simon a break, we had a lovely time with them.

There were lots of birds and we all got a plate of apples and a little container of meal worms to feed the birds. Lots of birds loved the apples and some just loved the worms.We had a lovely time.

  Charlie was off all over the place feeding his apple to the birds

 There were lots of different coloured birds, they were all over the place and some were very tame.

 Mia feeding one of the parrots

 Charlie just loved it when the  bird was resting on his hand

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 This Regent Parrot spent ages on Amy's hand sorting through the bowl of bran looking for the meal worms, it made a lovely mess!

Charlie at the Reptile Zoo

Little baby somethings!

Catching Up With My Blog

It has been a few weeks since I have updated my blog. Have been busy but also my computer has died and I am now using Amy's laptop till someone fixes my computer- not sure how long that will take.

As part of the Enlighten Festival they had an event at the Botanic Gardens called Botanicus Luminous. Bill and I went along and it was just lovely, it was a walk at night through parts of the Botanic Gardens. It was lit with candles and different lighting, they had fog pumping through the rainforest walk and they had a tuba and flute playing.

Further up in the rock garden they had a big gum tree light up and  had lovely lighting around the rock pool.My little camera never does well in the dark but managed to get an odd shot or too. There was a lovely atmosphere.

We then drove down to the actual enlighten festival and had a look at some of the buildings. Bill knew one of the guys who had done some of the projections that went up on the National Portrait Gallery.

 Then on Canberra Day, Bill and I rode into the Balloons and caught up with Bindi and Simon. We had a nice time but it was a bit chilly! Afterwards instead of lining up for the Rotary Breakfast with half of Canberra we headed down to the Artoven Bakery at Manuka and had some hot chocolates and crossiants and raisin toast there.Was a lovely way to start the day.