Nerriga Ride 2nd May 2024

Well, another successful Nerriga ride. Depending on who’s weather chart you looked at, it could have been either a very wet day, patchy rain throughout the day, or cloudy but fine. Seven riders turned up to do the ride, and it turned out to be a beauty. 

 

Given that the national park was still closed, we travelled down the old Princes Highway to Albion Park, then through Jamberoo to Kiama, around the juicy Kiama bends and into Gerringong for morning coffee in the Main Street. A brief senior moment by the ride leader had us turning off the M1 one ramp  too early, and so we had to come into Albion Park by the back way to get onto the Jamberoo Road. The countryside around there is looking fabulous at the moment.

 

We then followed the coast road through Geroa, Shoalhaven heads and on to Nowra, and then took the BTU Road across to HMAS Albatross and on to the Braidwood Road (the one we call the Nerriga Road) to the Nerriga pub for lunch. As we left Albatross, we faced a sheet of rain which look like it was going to carry on forever, but it only lasted for 10 minutes and then the sun broke through again. We did come upon some wet sections of road where the rain had finished just before we got there, but we had a great run.

 

After lunch we head south until we reach the Oallin  Ford Road, which we followed to Bungonia then turned right to Marulan. We originally thought we might refuel at Pheasants Nest to take and take advantage of the new facilities there, but it seemed that most of the bikes had consumed almost all of their petrol ( I wonder how?) by the time we got to Marulan and so we fuelled there. As we are about to leave, we faced another  sheet of rain which we thought would take us all the way to Sydney, so decided to cut and run. I would normally have taken the road through Exeter on the way home to get off the freeway for a spell, but the rain changed that. Fortunately we only had 15 minutes of rain and after that it was fine all the way home to the Central Coast .

 

The beauty of this run is the open flowing bends on the Nowra to Nerriga stretch, and the variety of terrain up to Marulan.  Lunch at the Nerriga pub is always a good treat. I got home after dark, so didn't check the GPS to see how far we rode, but it was worth it. Why go the short way when there is a long way you can go?

 

Thanks for joining me on this run.

 

Frosty