Luskintyre Airfield Ride 25th Sep 2025

The day beckoned with a blue sky and double digit temperatures, the last time I tried to lead this ride it was very wet and very cold, only 2 riders showed up and we only got as far as Kulnura before giving it away. So 25+ riders decided this was the day to do the Luskintyre ride👍🏻

To be fair there were a few blow-ins with 3 Jim picked up at Bayview, Mike a mate of Ron’s and Anton who was joining for his first ride with the group, but still a sizable turnout for what is a long ride.

At the briefing I described the route, old road to Wollombi for morning tea, Wollombi rd to Cessnock, Old Maitland/Old North roads to Lochinvar and thence on to the airfield. Some bright spark lobbed in “but do you know the gate code” but everyone knows it’s top to bottom middle row +#. Probably because everyone knows the code when we got there the whole gate was missing!

Given the newbies I described Corner Marking once again with emphasis on wait until relieved by the TEC who, being a glutton for punishment, was Pete of the Braces same as last week, thanks muchly Pete.

I also flagged to those who didn’t learn the hard way the other week, about the roadworks in Bellbird, and described my cunningly designed short cut to avoid them. I cast doubt on the trusty Live View app which was flagging no roadworks on Old Maitland road. Finally I invited any wannabe Radar Detectors to overtake me if they felt I was going too slow.

I was about to close the briefing when another spark said “what about the newbies” - damn, I knew there was something else. So I duly introduced the said newbies and they got the clap so now we could go. But Lo a young lady in distress called for help, well Erica did anyway. Apparently she had dropped her bike and the bark buster was binding on the throttle so I asked a couple of burly members to go and help whilst the rest of us mounted up. Thanks Mike and Ron, sorry it turned into a bigger tussle, you certainly earned your stripes. Erica also found she’d done herself some damage as well so went home after they freed things up. Hope you recover soon Erica.

So the trip itself was remarkably smooth, brisk and relatively uneventful apart from a couple of brief stops for roadworks.

We lost the Bayview mob at Road Warriors, apparently even Wollombi was a bridge too far. But everyone else made it to morning tea in good time. We even picked up another rider who hadn’t read the 9:30am start in the last email but rang me to ask where we were and he caught up by using time travel to get in front of us. Either that or he used the motorway😜

On the second leg we set off for Cessnock down the Wollombi road and I was planning on regathering the group before Bellbird proper but the roadworks had moved so my carefully designed short cut was useless and anyway aside from a 40km/h limit through Bellbird and Cessnock it flowed smoothly and we were soon off down Old Maitland road at pace. After a few kms the nonexistent roadworks made their appearance in the form of a nonexistent road surface, just dirt and a 40 km/h limit. Everyone coped with the change and after a couple more kms we were back on the black. At some point along this section of the ride a few of the middle of the pack got a flash of blue and red as a warning from an unmarked jam sandwich to slow down but apart from that heart starter no other boys in blue were in evidence.

Everyone made it to the airfield and we filled the area in front of the coffee shop which was closed as usual. Some wandered off into the distance on the excuse they were showing their ride companion around.

 

The group eventually broke up for the return trip, some went for a dirty afternoon (no not the rider and his companion) most used the Hunter Expressway to either reach the M1 or to catch the road to Freemans Waterhole, in any case a reasonable cross section made it back to the Pie where the worlds problems were ignored and vast quantities of BS were spouted.

 

As always, thanks for the great company on what was a pretty good ride even if I do say it myself 😁

 

Until the next time

Andy