30 Dec 2023
I felt very slow packing up this morning. Gonna need to get into the swing of things. I left at 8:30am, and quickly got to Waterfall Gully Road to start the Kuitpo Forest Overnight route I found on bikepacking.com. I took the option to the Mt Lofty Summit to see the view over Adelaide, which meant a 10km incline up a mountain bike track of varying quality on a loaded gravel bike. On one of the early steeper sections, I wanted to try getting up it on the bike, but when I realised I couldn't and tried to get off, I didn't unclip my cleats quickly enough (I'm still new to using them) and I fell and grazed up my leg. Great first day activity! From that point I played it on the safe side and walked up any inclines I was unsure about.
I think it took me about 2.5 hours to get to the Mt Lofty summit, at which point I wondered if I had overestimated my speed for this trip. But the rest of the day was much easier with a nice and cruisy bitumen downhill from the summit as a reward for the rough uphill I had just done. I took the options with more sealed surfaces since I was on a loaded gravel bike, and I'd had a bit of a hard time with it on the first mtb trail.
I stopped in Meadows to get a cupcake and a coffee, and fill up my water. I bought 3L of bottled water instead of going on a hunt to the tap at the oval, since I would have needed to treat that and I couldn't be arsed at that point.
For the last bit to the campsite you follow the Kidman Trail, which overlaps with the Heysen for some sections. Lovely views and ambience here. When I got to the campsite, I breathed a sigh of relief, since I couldn't find other information about it online, I only found it on bikepacking.com. So I wasn't 100% confident it existed! It even has toilets and a rainwater tank. No other campers showed up, so I was completely by myself for the night... I had never done that before so I was quite scared actually and only got about 4 hours of sleep. But I made it, and have hopefully trained my body a little bit now that it is ok to sleep in such conditions.
Funnily enough, as I was leaving the next morning I walked past the Woodcutter's Cottage which I didn't see that night. So I could have slept indoors if I had ventured a bit further! I felt a bit silly when I saw that. But it did have a passcode and required booking so I probably wouldn't have been able to sort that out on the same night anyway. I am only booking campsites on the day for this trip, so I can be flexible with just going as far as I feel each day.
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