David had to prise me away from our little cottage this morning – such a reality check to climb back on the old girl with loaded panniers.

We got a whole 1.7km down the road before having to stop- one of our panniers had fallen off. As tempting as it was to jettison it (especially as it was the one containing David’s clothes), we strapped it back on and pushed on.

It was a long hard slog today. The first 10k was quite beautiful- right by the beach with fabulous views across to Freycinet.

Once we got past the shelter of the peninsula it was full on southerly head winds- so what should have been a gently undulating ride became a slog uphill and down. We tried not to check the distance too often but inevitably it ended up being the distance equivalent of ‘a watched pot never boils’. We’d think we had ridden at least 10k only to find we had done 3!

Once the road headed inland scenery was sparse- dry paddocks many with skinny sheep. We stopped a couple of times to re-fuel and stretch but roads were narrow and places to pull over were few and far between.

At the 50k mark Triabunna emerged like an oasis. A beautiful seaside town – the main gateway to Maria Island so full of people coming and going. Even though only a few k’s from our final destination we stopped for quite a while there- first to sample the famous fish and chips from ‘The Fish Van’ . Apparently people drive up from Hobart just to get these F&Cs – which were certainly good- and the seagulls agreed! We then felt compelled to sample the wares from ‘The Coffee Van’ and ‘The Ice-cream Van’. After all this comfort eating were well fortified to complete our journey.

Arrived in Orford round 4 – pretty tired. Orford is on the Prosser River inlet. Not much in the way of a township here (other than the pub where we are staying and an IGA) but lots of houses going right down to the rover with private moorings.

We took a late afternoon walk to buy the makings for tomorrow’s lunch and stretch our creaky limbs. Tomorrow we head to Dunalley – mostly on gravel so will be an interesting day.

Definitely an early night for us tonight- hang on- one of us is already asleep!