Omeo to Corryong
Dau Two: Omeo to Corryong
The star turn of this day was another 30km climb, this time unsealed, on Highway C545. About 65km of the 140km trip is unsealed. Omeo to Benambra has a 6km climb, mostly under 7%, and spectacular views. There is a community store in Benambra (check the hours!) and then there is nothing for the next 120km. Which brings us back to food.
Food
One of the issues with food is not only finding something open, but navigating one's dietary requirements. I have an allergy which seems to have something to do with flour additives. So, buying sandwiches, or biscuits or cake, is always risking a nasty reaction. I also have trouble with rich dry foods like peanuts or biscuits, and with many chocolate bars. Eat a Mars Bar, (and most cycling bars), and I will be coughing and (too much information) for the next twenty minutes. On a trip like this I carry a significant amount of food to get around these issues.
For breakfast I make up a cup of muesli for each day. I carry a 570mil screw-top Gelista icecream container which does duty as my breakfast bowl.
Muesli Recipe: About equal amounts of rolled oats, roast unsalted peanuts, roast almonds, pepitas and sunflower seeds. Add a good slug of dried milk powder. To this I add 6 or 8 crushed cubes of 70% chocolate. I carry each meal in a reused nut bag, and when needed, tip it into the icecream container and add plenty of water.
Also bagged, is tea. For this trip I split a Back Country Beef Curry into three, and then added to each portion a bit more curry powder, some cous cous, currants, pepitas, roast almonds, and a few cashews. About an hour before tea, tip the whole lot into the icecream pot and add water. It bulks up for a good tasty meal.
That leaves lunches and in-betweens. Lunch on day one was my sourdough sandwiches which I made up with peanut butter and apricot jam, and on day two it was the frozen pasties. I visited the Corryong bakery for more pasties as I left town on day three.
I can manage small Whitakers chocolate bars and the occasional Cliff Bar, although they leave me coughing for some time. My go-to food is a variation on Anzac Biscuits. I make this up as a moist slice. It is a great blend of low and hi GI and the moist composition means I don't suffer the usual problems I have with energy bars.
Anzac Slice Recipe:
One cup each of plain flour, rolled oats (not quick oats), and well packed brown sugar.
¾ cup desiccated coconut. Use the longer stringy stuff rather than the more granular type.
Mix all this together.
Melt 125gm butter, two tablespoons Golden Syrup, in with two tablespoons of boiling water and add ½ teaspoon of carb soda.
Add the liquid to the flour mixture and work through. This will be enough liquid to make a sticky mix.
Use a shallow tray lined with baking paper to make a 1-1.3cm thick slice.
Cook at 180 degrees Centigrade for 12 minutes. Don't over-cook.
It may seem too soft when it comes out of the oven. Leave it to cool, then lift onto a chopping board with the baking paper and cut to the size pieces you require.
This is not anergy bar for a jersey pocket. I stack mine in layers in a plastic container with sheets of baking paper between the layers, and have container in the top of a pannier or in my trunk bag.
Back to the ride: After Benambra, the bitumen continues another 15km up the valley. Then the metal road and the climb begin.
Depending on the weather and time of day, the trip out to the climb can be equally spectacular, with valleys hidden under fog.
The climb itself is about 34km, with good surfaces and very little traffic. There are multiple signs about timber trucks, but I saw no sign of these until I had begun the descent. As with the Mt Hotham climb, the strategy for enjoyment is simply to stay in low gear and take it slowly. The one addition to this is the fact that the corners tend to be corrugated on the inside, and a gently 5-7% slope can suddenly become 10% as you come out of the turn. It's all easy to avoid by shifting to the outside of the corners. Given that there is almost no traffic—I doubt I saw a dozen vehicles past Benambra—being on the wrong side of the road is no problem. What I would not do is ride with in-ear music; it helps to be able to hear vehicles coming.
One of the noticeable oddities of the Corryong Road was the large amount of red and orange gradient warnings on my GPS. These did not match with the reality at all—I saw red (where it says GRADE) maybe once, for a few seconds, and this suggests to me that the grades are estimated from a GPS trace which is not particularly accurate. The ride is much easier than the GPS was suggesting.
The run down from the summit is about 20km to Stacey's Bridge, where the bitumen begins, and the general downhill continues to Corryong. Speed on the run down to the bitumen needs to be fairly restrained as there are occasional gutters and corrugations which would be dangerous at speed (on a touring bike, at least.)
I arrived at Corryong in the dark, but in time to augment my tea with some hot chips. Despite the long climb, I actually descended 300m more for the day than I had climbed! (Climb 1925, descend 2240)
