Saddleworth Ozstoc RTE June 2013

We had a foggy start to a ride down to Saddleworth for our lunch and there was a chance of rain as well. Just we left town the fog cleared and we even had some warmth from the sun but it wasn’t to last for long.

Map Link http://goo.gl/maps/4Jslb

About 10 kms north of Hallet we were back in the fog again with about 500 metres visibility but getting thicker the further south we went. By the time we left Hallet anything after a 100 metres was a guess. As luck would have it a 25 kph speed limit was in place due to road works, no one was working so I kept it at 40. A little later the limit was up to 80 for about 5 kms and then down to 40 (kept at 60). Road works seemed to have gone on forever, maybe it was the fog, may be the slow speed as it’s normally 110 k/h. At one point in the fog it did seem like we did have a light shower of rain but it was hard to tell for sure.

I had four cars behind me so I pulled off the road at Mount Bryan and let them pass and a few kms down the road just after the Crystal Brook turn off the fog cleared leaving a clear run to Burra where we usually take the truck by-pass route unless we need food etc. At 11.20 am we pulled up in the hotel car park.

I took the photo of Heather standing in the hotel car park.

About a minute later I spotted the lights of four bikes coming towards us. All four 1300s all arriving together from places down south. So, we beat last years turn up by an extra ST and three people. Just we were about to go inside the hotel a green 1100 (Mikep) arrives from Port Augusta making 6 ST’s and 10 people.

I had a senior’s moment and forgot to get a photo inside the hotel but I managed a few shots of the bikes and a short video taken on my still camera. We were the last to leave at 2:30 pm and from what I can see is that we all had a good day and we thank everyone for turning up.

1 Green ST1100A, 2 Red ST1300's, 2 Black ST1300's and my Blue AT1100A.

From Left, Mike, Pete, Richo, Donna, Heather, Kathy, Don and Mel.

 Kathy and Don all ready to leave

 Rich and Kathy getting ready and mike next his green ST1100A

 The group that met down in the city took photos as well so maybe more to come.

The return trip for us was incident free other than a sudden drop in speed as a white car (about 1 km away) we were following and slowly catching was turned out to be a local police car. In the 40 kph road works section, he did a u turn and stopped on the side of the road. No doubt doing speed checks in the lower limit. He waved at us as we passed him.

The end result for us was a round trip of 266 kms over 3.5 hours with an average speed of 77 kph and 15.5 litres based on my average fuel usage.