We’ve met many wonderful folks and stayed in lots of great places during this tour – it’s been a amazing journey. The flip side of this coin, however, is the difficulty saying goodbye or leaving the place. This morning was such a time.

We stayed in Melrose at our friends Hugh and Kyoto’s last night. Warm fire, laughs and hot meals (and ice cream, too – they’ve been following this blog, haha!). But this morning it was time to leave, even though we were putting it off and lying in bed listening to the rain pelt down on the tin roof, trying not to think about their offer to stay another day…

Eventually we dragged ourselves out, said goodbye and rode to the nearby Melrose bike shop, Over The Edge to say farewell to them as well.

Melrose is known as the mountain bike Mecca of South Australia and the guys at Over The Edge run the best bike shop I’ve ever seen. Better still, the manager Jake rides a loaded big wheel uni better than anyone we’ve met so far!

Their shop has a roasting fireplace and comfy couches where we pretended to look at our maps and other excuses to bask in the fire warmth a moment longer, watching the driving rain outside.

So with the cold rain and wind outside, and all these warm people and warm fireplaces, it won’t come as surprise that we didn’t get on the road until 11:30.

We had an hour of light showers until the heavy rain set in. Riding in strong wind or heavy rain is a grind, and doing both at the same time quickly makes you miserable…

Too wet and cold to continue, we found an unused council shed and did what we could to dry off and warm up, winning back our lost smiles…