Riding to the world's end!

It's only 321 km to ride to the world's end— and back!

World's End is out east of the northern Mt Lofty Ranges. There's an old Wesleyan Methodist Church, and not much else, but where else can you ride the World's End Highway! 

My day began at 11.15am, which is late to be leaving for a long ride, and meant pushing into a north-easterly until Clare. Being a Friday it was also fairly busy on the Main North Road, so I turned off at Giles Corner and took the quieter route via Riverton and the Rattler and Riesling Trails. These have a good solid surface which would be fine on a road bike, picturesque scenery, and are quite solitary during the week. I met two push bikes.

You can see the effects of the wind and the slow climb up to Clare on my average speed. I was holding just over 20kph at Tarlee, and dropped back to 19.3 at Clare. It took to Point Pass to get back to 20.

The nice thing about the two trails, for occasional riders, is they are restricted to railway gradients. It's a slow grade up for the first two thirds from Auburn and then all downhill into Clare.

Clare begins a 111 metre climb up to the top of the range as you head out to Farrell Flat, but it is never much over 5 per cent, if at all. The range gave protection from the head wind.

Between Clare and Burra I was passed by less than 10 cars (dusk at Farrell Flat) and less than that many between Burra and Playford!

 

I had intended to take the Truro - Moculta road to avoid the Sturt Highway; it would let me roll down into Nuri via Angaston, but given the time of night I took the main road anyway. Once I reached Krondorf Road I left the bike path and took the main road into Gawler. No traffic at 4am!

All in all, a great ride.

Strava