It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly two months since we hired the bike in Switzerland and set off exploring their amazing mountains with our friends Alain and Monika.! I have to admit, I’m a mountain man – I love the mountains, I love being in the mountains, I love staring out over the mountains getting lost in the moment, and I love riding in the mountains.  I feel at home.

I’m also told that hiking in the mountains is also good – sounds like hard work to me…

So after I got a text on Saturday suggesting an impromtu ride on Sunday in the mountains I was keen. And Deb didn’t have a class on and the weather forecast looked great.

We’re in.

The plan was simple – meet for breakfast at Jerra then ride to dead horse gap where we would turn around and come home.

So the plan didn’t get off to a great start with the cafe forgetting the order for most of our table … twice. 90 minutes later we left – while we had a good chat most of the group still hadn’t had breakfast. Hopefully we’ll have better luck down the road.

I really hate the Monaro highway to Cooma. I don’t know what it is but this bit of the road is BORING! I have never liked it and I just find it brain numbing. Maybe it’s that it is heavily policed and always busy and tends to be tedious.

Or maybe it’s because it’s what needs to be endured as it’s the gateway to so many great roads and destinations: Brown mountain; Mount Durragh; Mount Imlay; Cann River; the Bonang; the Barry way (got to do that one – not really a ZX14R road as it’s all dirt…); the Alpine way; and the Snowy Mountain highway.

By the time we had got passed Cooma the guys who missed breakfast must have nearly been ready to start on their leather gloves. Luckily for them we came upon a nice little cafe that lived up to the promise and delivered food and coffee.

And not long from here the yellow lines start signalling that we’re in the mountains. Okay not Swiss mountains but old mountains that have been weathered for a much longer period of time. While these don’t have quite the climb you still have beautiful ribbons of tarmac winding it’s way around the mountains and through valleys. And being still technically ski season the mountains are still covered with a generous dose of snow leaving the mountain air crisp and clean.

All up it was a great day on the bike with a relaxed 500km for the day.