Day 13 – Wed, 14 Jul to Cooktown

Today I posted both days 12 & 13 so  check them both out.

Well the showers were gone by morning replaced by solid rain. It rained half the night and was still going strong this morning. So after breakfast we thought that we would look at the Bloomfield Track (Cape Trib to Cooktown) that lay ahead of us and see how the going went. We were not optimistic given the conditions of the past 12+ hours.

We didn’t travel all that far on the track when we called it quits – well some would say that but in actual fact we were being sensible little vegemites. The road, no track, was atrocious – we were sliding all over the place and the thought of another 80km of this was unthinkable.

As there was 3 creek crossings ahead I had visions of us making it across one and then not the second, and by the time we turned back to recross the first we would be unable to cross. So we would be stuck between the two – with a croc either side. So common sense prevailed and we decided to head S the way we came yesterday.

So we road back down to the Daintree River, crossed over on the ferry and rode back into Mossman. We then headed west up over to Mt Molloy then N towards Cooktown where we are now camping. This slight detour cost us an additional 250km but far less stress – I just had further visions of dropping Optimus Prime half way across the river and it going glug, glug, glug.

In actual fact the ride to Cooktown this way was really fantastic. We had a wonderful twistie ride up to Mt Molloy then the countryside changed to open flat country with stunted trees. This continued until we started to rise just after Mt Elephant.

We had lunch at Bobs Lockout which looked across to the surrounding mountains and back down across the plain that we had just traversed.

From here right through to Lakeland where the road goes left to Cape York or right to Cooktown it was full of curves and sweepers into open areas with continual changes in vegetation. From Lakeland to Cooktown the road continued to offer some great riding and some straighter stretches.

We turned off onto gravel for a short 5km ride up to the Lions Den Hotel (I think that is what it is called – the Lion something)– a bit of a local icon where we had a soft drink and a chat with some locals. I also met a couple who were still on their way home from the Ulysses AGM in Albany back in March. They had a Basestation caravan so the bike was in the van with them.

It is simply a beautiful country – the vegetation changes as often as the odometer ticks over. The forest mountains ring us continuously. We have seen rainforests, tea crops, sugarcane fields, sparse landscape & brahman cattle. The sugarcane is being harvested so we have mechanised cane cutters, cane hopper trucks unloading into the small gauge cane rail cars.

So although we didn’t do what we set out to do this day, boy who would miss the 350km alternative.