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Storm Chasers

by Oska

Wednesday 6-Jan-2010

Sydney - Putty Road - Singleton - Gresford - Dungog - Bucketts Way - Gloucester

I met Steve at Lane Cove BP at 9.30am and headed out towards Windsor via the toll roads. It was perfect weather for a ride and being a Wednesday we thought we would have the Putty Road pretty much to ourselves. How right we were.

I've been using one of those Ventura Estoril tail packs for a couple of years now and had this expanded (15l) and packed full as well as my 3l Ventura Mallory tank bag and a decent sized bum bag. Steve was on his Ducati Monster S4R, and had his Ventura rack and bag, plus tank bag (similar to bagster stuff). With my tank bag expanded and jammed full, it was flopping around on the back of the bike like a, err - floppy thing, so we stopped at the very start of the Putty Road and made some changes - i.e. - me putting a few of my bits in Steve's tank bag. Thanks mate. Not a great start to the trip stuffing around with luggage but we probably have all done that haven't we?

It's been a long time since I have been on the Putty Road and on Wednesday morning it was as good as it gets: sunny skies, mid/high 20s, almost deserted, NOT ONE COP. Needless to say we set a good pace heading for Halfway,  punting through the twisties around Colo Heights and then on to the open stretches and winding the bikes out.  We overtook a guy on an old Triumph 650, and he stopped to talk to us when we pulled over at the burnt out Halfway House.

He was heading to Singleton from Ulladulla - nice, check out the seat! A couple of other bikes showed up to stare at the 'ghost servo' and we took off heading north into the twisties. It was pretty much perfect. No cars, only a couple of bikes heading south and Steve and I barrelling into every corner uninterrupted - glory days.

I said to him in Singleton "I could go back and do that over and over again for the rest of the week". It was awesome. You know that feeling when you have just done a 20-30km stretch and you got all the corners right, all your gear changes right and you just flowed from one corner to the next, powering out of them to the next left or right to do it all again? That is how it was - you understand.

But we had bigger fish to fry: namely the Oxley, so we knew it would get even better. When we got out of the twisties and into the drab mining areas heading into Singleton the temperature seemed to rise 10C. We stopped in Singleton for lunch. Steve led me into a shopping mall - WTF! We parked among the hordes in 30ºC+ heat and went into the mall.  I told him this had better be good. What  were we doing in here? Cafe food in the mall is good, but wrong, so wrong - sitting in there with bike gear on and the place full of the elderly, the infirm and kids.

We fuelled up and the next bit was pretty average and very hot - Gresford - Vacy - Dungog to the Bucketts Way; yeah good from the point of being completely deserted but the road surfaces were generally abysmal - so bad in places that it was stuffing up my riding. I found myself scanning for ruts and bumps in the bitumen rather than ahead up the road - not ideal. Dirt would be better - why put bitumen down if all you're going to do is turn it into a potted mine field?

Anyway, we got to Bucketts Way and headed north for Gloucester where we had accommodation booked for the next two nights. I think the Bucketts Way is a bit of a shitfight (to Gloucester from the south), and how it gets in the Hema Maps Australian Motorcycling Atlas is beyond me - it's nothing but a transit stage to better things up north.

Twenty km out of Gloucester we saw some storm clouds building north of us - the way we were heading. Big fucking storm clouds. Steve must have been thinking the same thing as I was, and our speeds went up 20-30km/h as we went hard(ish) for Gloucester. The only positive thing we could take from it was that all the cars heading south were dry, so at least it wasn't tipping down just yet. We were staying at Gloucester Country Lodge, which is on the southern outskirts of town, and two hundred metres before we hit the Country Lodge there were some BIG hailstones falling between me and Steve. I copped one on the helmet that felt like a baseball just as we turned into the lodge. We made it by the skin of our teeth. One minute later it was bucketing down.

After a shower and a change into some clean clothes it was a fifty metre walk to the pub for a stack of beers and dinner before crashing out for the night.

Oxley and Thunderbolts tomorrow.

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