Perth to Adelaide - Day 23 - Ceduna

I was ready to start cycling as soon as there was the faintest hint of light in the sky this morning, in order to make some progress before potentially windy weather arrived. The landscape was very open farmland now and a few hints of habitation were getting more frequent as the day went by. I stopped to eat the last of my muesli bars with 37km done, and at that point a really vicious headwind kicked in.

Progress became super slow again and I had real doubts about making Ceduna before dark, but of course there was no other option but to dig deep and keep cycling, so that is what I did!

Around midday I finally got to the small farming town of Penong, the first settlement in a long time! There is a 'restaurant' inside the gas station doing the usual trucker type food but it was good to sit down for a bit, out of the wind even is it was at Caltex.

I considered staying here but it wasn't the nicest place to relax so figured an afternoon dual with the headwind would be preferable...so onwards I rode.

Not many photos today...I was staring at my front wheel and just trying to progress, although I did notice the aptly named 'Windy Ridge Farm'!

Finally Ceduna got closer. My legs just jelly and speed under 15km. As a final test, the wind increased to 40-50km...and I started laughing out loud at the absurdity of the situation. Maybe eating a gel would help? Fresh legs would help more! What would Mike do? [I will explain the Mike reference in a future post].

Of course I kept going. Rolling into town I can safely say I had nothing left in the tank...but Ceduna!! I've bloody well done it!!

There is a bio security checkpoint at the entrance to town to stop the spread of fruit flies...the gaurd asked me if I had any fruit in my panniers, which is a perfectly reasonable  question but I still found it hysterical. I last ate fruit 500km back.

8 Days across the Nullarbor and I am pleasently surprised that as an old fella I can still push out consecutive big days on the bike. My last rest day was Esperance, 10 days and 1400km back which feels like it happened last year. It was awesome, beautiful, and incredibly challenging out there.

Now its time to refuel, and figure out a plan for the last stretch to Adelaide, but I am 3 days ahead of schedule so can take it much easier from here and look around a bit more.

Total distance today: 153km

Total to date: 2672km