Our night in Miena was fine, a comfortable night in a warm room. Pasta pesto also tastes nice when cooked in a hotel room, anyway! It was good we were in a room: it had been a cold night, everything looked white in the morning thanks to frost... From Miena the day started with a 17km back
track to the junction for Poatina. This was unavoidable: from Bothwell to Poatina, Miena is the only town with accommodation. So we had our long 88km day to Miena, and then from Miena to Poatina it was another 60km via the Fantastic Nothing.
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| Morning frost in Miena |
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| View over the Great Lake in Miena, from our room, with some mystical fog and fishing boats |
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| Another view over the Great Lake, from a viewpoint on our way, later in the morning |
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| A different, smaller lake and a fishing pier, trying to get symmetry into the view. Fishing seems to be the big thing at the great lakes. |
Leaving Miena we had some slight hills, and then a nice descent. On this descent, we had to slow down at some point: the road was full of sheep! Some people were moving sheep from one place to another, and this was via the road. It was literally full of sheep, and we could slowly ride through the middle of the herd. Nice new experience!
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| Cycling through a herd of sheep, interesting. It was an "Open Sesame" experience: as you rode though it, it just opened up to let you go through, while surrounded by sheep. |
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| Scenery on the way |
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| The Fantastic Nothing in the Midlands |
The road to Poatina was still undulating for quite a while, with 1 serious climb in it. At some point, it descended steeply from the highlands down. In 15' fast downhill riding with many switchbacks, we were 880m meters lower, and out of the midlands! 2,5 days of hard work, hilly cycling with a lot of climbing and then only 15' speedy downhill and it's all gone! Ahhhhh.... On this descent we had hoped to get good views, however there was some fog and mostly smoke from controlled burning. So no view and instead, a cold smoky fast ride! We arrived in Poatina, found ourselves in a friendly and simple hostel, where we enjoyed once again the open fire and a nice meal.
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| Scenery at our lunch break |
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| More lunch break scenery |
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| The fast and cold descent towards Poatina |
When we woke up, the sun was shining and the view over the mountain range was fantastic! We could also see the fog hanging in the valley - more about that in a second... The lady at the hostel told us that it would take about an hour for the fog to clear, but we decided to leave... Well, it was very thick fog, and it was a bit more descent and then light, undulating cycling: it was cold without any sun!!! (we even wore our cycling gloves) This was still supposed to be a very nice stretch of cycling, but we did not see a thing - for 2 hours! And yes indeed, after that it was still very nice.
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| Morning view over the mountain range, from where we had cycled down the day before, with the fog in the valley slowly climbing up the slope... |
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| What the fog!? |
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| A short clearing in the sky, after which we went back into deep thick fog |
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| Even the sheep were blur |
Suddenly, after 2 hours, the sky cleared and we had wonderful views - just in time to enjoy this with a cup of coffee. It was going to be a relatively short and easy day, so we could take our time and have long breaks, sitting in the warming sun and enjoying the final day of our tour and the last bits of fantastic views. Just before arriving in Launceston we found a cycling path into the city, and followed that. It went through some nice neighbourhoods, and ended with a very steep
descent into the city. After 18 days, we were back where we started from. A very nice tour through Tassie - but more about that in a summary, one of the next days!
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| Once the fog cleared, we had this beautiful day, with fantastic views of the mountains in the distance |
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| Almost back in Launceston, still high in the hills with the city below |
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| On arrival, big surprise: Vere has bought herself a nice old car! |
