no rules...no politics...just ridin'

Breakfast at Byron...then to Koff's

I stayed down at Kingscliff on Friday night and so early yesterday morning Kat and myself decided to head down to Byron for breakfast. We took the coast road down as far as Cabarita Beach and then headed inland to the motorway. The cruise down to the end of the motorway was great but once we hit the roadworks the traffic really built up. When this section of motorway is completed the road from the border all the way down to Byron Bay will be excellent. A lot of work happening as we rode the 5km bottleneck - the earthworks alone are amazing. Anyway, once through it all we took the turn off to Brunswick Heads for a look.

This town is a little like Byron Bay with the hippie types but no where near as big or commercial. Still a fairly sleepy little place not too different to how it was last time I visited. A lot of people sitting enjoying breakfast at the two curbside eateries opposite the camping ground. The Hotel Brunswick is a fantastic old retro type pub - it wasn't open when we rode past but I remember going there a few years back and enjoying a couple of quite ones in the beer garden. Heaps of character - will have to visit that one again soon. Back onto the motorway for the short squirt to the Byron Bay turn off.

The road from the motorway out to Byron was the quietest I have ever seen it - has been very busy the last few times I travelled down but it was still early Saturday morning. I'm not a big fan of Byron Bay - too commercial for me and of course very expensive. Also a lot of hippy types wearing the technicolor shirts / pants with the tea cosy hats and bare feet - they seem to flock to Byron. The only thing I really enjoy is the Beach Hotel owned by Strop and the once extremely sexy Delvene - this has got to be one of the best pubs (although it does get really busy) on the north coast. We pulled up right out the front and planted ourselves on one of the tables looking out over the beach - what a perfect place. There were a few people at the pub but it wasn't too hard to get a good table. Ordered breakfast and sat there watching the locals and tourists wandering past for about an hour and a half.
We decided to ride out to the lighthouse and check some of the scenery out so re-mounted and rode the couple of k's to the point. This is the most easterly point of the Australian mainland and so is a fairly significant tourist attraction but when we got up to the top there was a woman standing at the gate into the lighthouse precinct asking for $3 to park the bike - what a rip off - turns out that it is aimed at reducing the traffic up to this area to try to preserve it. Fair enough!
Looking south from up near the lighthouse We turned around and pulled over to the side of the road and took in the spectacular view looking south. We also watched a guy hang gliding - it looked as if he was literally hanging in the air - fantastic. Headed back down and then rode around the roads beneath the lighthouse on the north side admiring some of the houses - need stacks of cash to own one of these places.

The weather was really starting to warm up so we thought we would head off. Took a road across to Bangalow where we re-fueled and then headed back to Kingscliff along the motorway. Hit a bit of rain on the way back but it was patchy and looked to be moving inland fairly quickly.

Koff's Place
Got back to Kat's place almost dry. Had a coffee and then headed up to Nerang to meet up with Koff, Grizz & Panda. Got there about lunch time and had a beer and a chat with the fella while Trish slept upstairs. Waited for a while then rang Panda - both her & Grizz decided not to come so it was just the three of us on the two bikes.

Koff led us on a ride around some of the back roads at Oxenford - there is so much development going on along side the M1. Housing estates popping up everywhere - the better ones were further away from the motorway and up a little higher. Anyway, from here we headed up to Tamborine. Decided to stop in at the St Bernards pub for a drink - they have this massive bloody St Bernard dog that just wanders around the pub - I reckon he must be close to 60kg! The beer garden has a great view looking down a valley out to Southport and mid Saturday afternoon with the sun shining was just fantastic.

Headed from the pub down the goat track towards Canungra. At the bottom we turned towards the coast and took a slow cruise back to Koff's place. Not one drop of rain for the whole afternoon, although it did get pretty overcast for a while. Left Koff's place about 5pm and headed back down to Kingy. Another great day's riding.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home