Lily and Tim's Travel Blog: Thunderbolts and lightening very very frightening

Day 19. 28/9/11: Rawnsley Park to Trees

Woke up at around 4am to the most amazing lightening storm I've seen in ages! For a while it was just lightening and a few low rumbles but then it got closer and closer and closer until we could see the stuff hitting the ground nearby. Being a total scaredy-cat, I stayed in the van while Tim went out and brought all our stuff undercover. I'm not that good with storms. Besides, I hear the safest place to sit one out is inside a car. So inside I stayed.

Didn't get much sleep after that, so we got up when it got light, just before 6 and got ourselves ready to head off for our big ride. We zoomed down hills and then climbed up some more. Tim got swooped by magpies today as Lily cunningly stayed tucked in behind him (we figured out magpies will attack the leader... but also because it was really quite windy and it meant I didn't have to pedal so hard!).

After 21.5k we reached a good looking set of trees that we thought we might camp under later, so we locked up the bikes and ran back to Rawnsley Park. Facing 21 kms of up and down running, we thought we'd break it up into chunks. We'd walk the first kilometre to get our legs warmed up, then run the next 6. Then walk then run then walk then run, breaking our run up into 3 manageable chunks of 7 kilometres. The first 7 km was great! We flew! Being dive bombed by swallows this time! We cracked 11.7kms an hour at one point. I was glad for a bit of shade at the end of that section, though. The storm last night hadn't done much to break the heat.

We continued on our way, pretty well sticking to the plan, until we reached 19 km and thought we'd walk the last 2k. An icecream, a shower and we jumped into the van and reached our next camp a bit after 1pm. We had a look at the maps. The next few days looked a bit uneven. A 25k, followed by an 11k and then another 25k, which included Mount Little (a few people we've spoken to have said 'oh, have you done Mt Little yet?' Followed by sniggers and looks of pity when we say 'um, noooo?'). So we thought we could find a better camp spot and make the days more even.

We headed closer to Merna Mora (AKA Moaning Myrtle - Lily can't quite manage to get her tongue around Merna Mora...and she calls herself a linguist...), a camp site we'd rejected on the grounds that we'd have to pay for it. Well it started clouding over when we left the bikes. We didn't find a camp site between us and Merna Mora, so we camped at the Merna Mora bush camp. And then the heavens opened. And the lightening started again. And the wind was mental (we listened to the radio briefly - severe wind warnings). Tim got the tarp up in the rain. All our food boxes and esky have mud splashes all over them. But we're inside, warm and safe. I've got a hearty pumpkin soup on the go, we've seen some amazing sand storms passing the ranges and the eeirest sunset ever (sorry about the lack of photo, the weather's not conducive to doing much of that). But we've still got a 24k run ahead of us tomorrow. Here's to a good night's sleep!!