Wildside Wrap

Sunday, 2 February 2014

Whilst organising my blog yesterday I tagged all my Wildside 2012 entries (there weren't many but you can see them via the new menu tag on the left if you are interested). Anyway I came across a post about what we would do differently next time - let's see how well we learned from our experiences in 2012 - my original post is in black, my new comments are in green:

• Despite the expense and the hassle of moving 4 times we'd still stay in Cradle Mtn, Tullah, Zeehan and Strahan (2 nights) as it made the driving so much less arduous.  It would be tempting to skip the Cradle night and stay 2 nights at Tullah but that would mean more driving to get there from Hobart in the first place, then an extra hour on the 2nd day as well so it would be too much.
• Yep we stuck with this plan. I just loved staying in the cabin at Waldheim (particulary once I didn't have to sleep under a picnic blanket). It was a) relatively cheap, b) surrounded by wilderness and c) quaint & cosy
• I'd probably not order the vegetarian stir fry from the Zeehan Heemskirk motel and just stay in the motel room and eat cardboard or something instead.
• Yep - managed to avoid doing both the stir fry and the cardboard, in fact we researched somewhere better to eat on Trip Advisor - The Pit Stop Cafe - and although it wasn't exactly what we were after (it was more lunchy than dinnery), it was pretty good and the owner was really nice. The kids had the old style milkshakes where you get a full glass of milkshake, plus the metal cup filled with an equal amount of leftovers. Awesome!  On the topic of dodgy vegetarian food, I also avoided eating dinner at Tullah too as our room had a microwave so I could heat something nice instead.

 

• I wouldn't take the kayak again - it made loading the car a pain (literally - my back is still sore) and the roof box would have been way more useful.  There were ample opportunities to cycle instead.
• Yep, ditched the kayak and didn't miss it. Instead we had all four bikes on the roof which was ideal as there were no hassles loading the back of the car.
• We wouldn't bring the hand pressure water pump thing. We'd buy one which plugs into the car instead or go without entirely as all our stops had places to wash bikes.
• Just brought a bucket and brushes this time which was totally fine until they got stolen from us at Zeehan in some sort of pass-the-parcel-who-do-these-belong-to-oh-well-me-I-guess incident. The place at Strahan had a hose though so all was fine.
• We'll stay somewhere else in Strahan as although the place was cosy it had signs everywhere threatening to debit our credit card the cost of for 2 extra nights accommodation if we committed any heinous crimes such as not putting the washing up away or checking out at 10:01.
• Ok the jury is out on the success of this one. This time we stayed here: http://kittysplace.com.au.  This was in a great location right next to the beach and finish which was super convenient. But I found it a bit claustrophobic.  The living area was tiny and it was all tidy and clean but quite out-dated. It was a good thing the weather was fantastic as it would have been pretty bad huddling there for a day and a half like we did the previous year. At $200 a night it felt like it was overpriced (btw I'm not sure how it managed to cost that much given the list prices on the web). Hmmph. 
• I would take more photos on day one - the flowers and scenery was amazing. In fact there's still heaps I want to see next time (such as Zeehan's spray tunnel and Montezuma Falls).
• Well. Firstly on day one it was raining so the nice flowers were all closed up at the finish of day 1. And we didn't manage to see Montezuma falls (road closed) or the spray tunnel. Oh well!

Not a bad effort overall though I recon.  I found a good balance between getting a good parking sport at the middle and end of each stage, and not having to hang around for too long.  The weather certainly helped with this - for example we certainly didn't mind waiting around for 2-3 hours at Trial Harbour this year whereas last year we didn't even get out of the car!

We kept track of our expenses, and including petrol, food, accommodation, entry fees, pre-race bike maintenance and everything else, it came to roughly 2500. Which is expensive. In fact my trip to Perth for the Cape to Cape in 2012 cost a bit less than that but I went for  a week! Still there's a big difference between travelling solo (for accounting purposes) and paying for a whole family.

Jon enjoyed this year's race but at the moment he's not super keen to make arrangements for 2016 quite yet.  I'm not sure it would be all that exciting a 3rd time around either!  Also it's worth remembering that because Jon rides at the head of the field it's much easier to be support crew - we have less long to wait for him and we're finished earlier in the day. The poor people starting further back in the race have a much later start (often after doing a short cruise stage then having to wait 40-50 minutes in the heat/rain to get started for real again), and then they take longer to do the stage, so they aren't finishing until quite late. Therefore their support crew get the worst parking places (unless they arrived earlier and hung around for ages), and more importantly, they miss out on the choc chip muffins & pastries in the catering tent as by the time they arrive the rest of the field has had time to eat 2 lunches.

At the  Cape to Cape being mid-pack didn't really matter as there was no 'free' catering or water at the finish of the stage, but you also didn't have any pre-race cruise stages when I did it, so when you went to the start line you didn't have to wait around too much.

In fact having observed the riding, I recon I'd still to prefer to ride the Cape to Cape (again) rather than ride Wildside. The Wildside cruise stages would break my spirit, particularly in bad weather and it seems to be a lot more technical than Cape to Cape. I like technical riding (if it's not tooo crazy) but my technical ability outrates my riding-up-hills ability so I end up stuck behind all the chumps on all the fun stuff which is very frustrating.  Dr Evil suffered a fair bit of this at Wildside - I would have exactly the same problems I recon.

Anyway - thats it. We had a great time, and it's great to get deep into the heart of the mining regions and the wild west coast.  I also got to get out for a ride or run on every day except for one which kept me happy!  It was tough on the car and I'm glad I didn't have to drive halfway back to Strahan yesterday to pick up Jon from the end of the Cradle Mt run, but of course I'm disappointed for Jon that he didn't get to do it.

Oh - the kids? Well they had a great time. They rode their bikes, swam, watched DVDs, explored new cabins, saw lots of wildlife, walked around Dove Lake, rolled down more sand-dunes than you could count, and swam in the harbour at Strahan. They survived the long drives (Hobart-Cradle & Strahan-Hobart) fine, mostly because we had a bag stocked full of library books and had some nice stops along the way.