Kalamunda-Mundaring

As you can see, we had a good long break from bike riding over the Holidays. One of the reason is by the 23 th Dec. I had reached my goal for the year doing 10 000 km. Between Christmas and New year we went down south to Albany, Stirling Ranges and Shannon NP. and took the MTB with us, but never used them as it was just too hot in places.

Yesterday evening, after a long ride to Fremantle and back home,we decided to do some Hill riding on Sunday. The plan was to put the Tandem on the back of the Van on the rack and drive to Midland and park by the old railway factory. It is very impressive to see both wheels sticking out each side by about 30 cm. As we left home by about 6 am I was not too worried about it.

It took us about 30 min to get to Midland where we parked the Van and got our self ready for the ride. As we left we had a nice headwind straight away. After a lot of hard work we arrived at the bottom of the Zigzag. That's were the Railway used to go up to Kalamunda, zigzagging its way up the Hill. We had a rest for a few minutes to get our breath back again, as we already climbed a decent hill to get here. We talked about going up the wrong way ( one way ) for half the climb before it changes into a two way street or not. Because if we went up Kalamunda Rd. we would have to go down again before we would reach Kalamunda Rd. And some parts of the climb are quite step. Plus this was our first ride into the Hills and we were not 100 % sure, how we manage the long climb.

The decision was made, and of we went up into the one way Street. About half way up, 2 guys on single speed bikes past us. So that made us feel good for riding up into the one way Street. About 1 1/2 km before Kalamunda we were past by another group of riders and they also had to come up the same way as we did. Made us feel not to bad.

In Kalamunda we had the well earned stop for a Coffee. Jenny and I were really pleased the way we got up the Hill. It was a climb of about 260 m and it was not as hard as we had expected. I have to say, we did not speak very much with each other all the way up, because both of us were concentrating on riding.

From here we carried on on Mundaring Weir Rd towards Mundaring. To start with, we had a nice long down hill for 2- 3 km before it went up again. On the way down we reached speed of up to 60 km/h and Jenny gave me twice a knock on my back . I knew straight away what that was about. Then it went uphill again till we reached the car park at the Dell and had some Bananas and Muesli bar to eat.

From here on it was all down hill to the bottom of the Weir. A long Climb up to Mundaring was our last big Hill climp for the day. Again by the time we reached Mundaring we both were surprised, how good we worked together uphill and it was no drama at all. Here we had an early lunch in the Bakery. I had a home made Bacon and Egg Pie and as dessert a big cream doughnut. Jenny had a custard pie.

After about a 1/2 hour rest, we attacked the last leg of the ride. It was mostly down hill from here on back to the Van. Was hard to get back into riding again after all the eating and resting. Just before we got to the bottom of the Hill, we reached the highest speed for the day of 68.5 km/h. At least this time Jenny was well behaved and no more knocking on my back. I think she just closed her eyes.
We did 64.5 km with 3 decent hills and we both been very pleased with what we achieved today.