Day 3 :: "I love the wind"

"I love the wind"... as we reminded Heidi last night, her famous public speaking quote. That said, she would have loved today. Thunder and stormy wind overnight, so a very windy day today. Plenty hard enough getting up some of those hills anyway, sometimes the wind made it impossible.

We rode only 32km today, half what we rode last time, from Mount Crawford to Tanunda in the Barossa Valley. A sensible decision, last time we were too ambitious. Today, it was difficult riding for the first 5 or 6 kms, we had previously driven along this rode and camped at the end. We both didn't like this part of the ride, it seemed like the day was going to be a miserable one, but after we had climbed for those 5 or 6km, we rode along a ridge and experienced much easier riding, both downhill and uphill.

After being rewarded with tremendous views of the Barossa Valley at Trail Hill, we rode through the elaborate entrance to Steingarten and followed the nice roadway along the rocky ridge, through the vines, stone walls and timber viewing platforms of the Steingarten vineyard (Steingarten translates as Garden of Stones).The rough dirt road (read stony rutted road) prevented a rapid descent to the valley floor, although we still acheived speeds of about 30km/h. Riding through the rolling farmlands towards Tanunda, we detoured slightly from the trail so we could ride under the famous archway over the road at the entrance to Tanunda.

We rewarded our day's ride with a late lunch at a Tanunda bakery, making it in just before they closed. The shorter ride was much better, both mentally and physically. The predicted afternoon thunder never came, instead the wind dropped and the skies cleared.

Stats:

• Riding: 32.2 km
  
• Riding Time: 02:06 hrs
  
• Rest + Riding Time: 03:25 hrs
  
• Average speed: 15.3 km/h
  
• Max speed: 50.4 km/h
  
• Temp: 30 degrees (Adelaide 33), windy, sunny