Well today’s reconnaissance ride confirmed that reconnaissance is definitely worthwhile, when exploring roads less familiar. 

Cevat, David, Les, Reece and Vaughan were silly enough to join me on my explorations.  First, I discovered than new residential developments meant that I won’t use Plan “A” again. 

Glenmore Road and Gorge

After our cuppa break at Ballan

David came up with a very worthwhile addition to my planned route. A temporary road closure stopping us from visiting a lookout atop a mountain was a minor hiccup, but the detour is definitely worth a revisit.    Our lunch stop beside Lake Wendouree

went to plan and it would have been nice to have been able to stay a bit longer but after earlier hiccups time was pressing.   I then confirmed my lack of local road knowledge leaving Ballarat, had to call on David’s guidance and still failed to find my planned route north of the highway.  I did succeed in finding more roadworks before eventually finding my planned route back to Melbourne via Wallace and

Ironbark Gorge and then got “geographically challenged” again around Bacchus Marsh.

Les handled TEC duties with aplomb

 Hopefully I sort those navigation details out next time – after all, it was reconnaissance.  The “Ring Road” was quite busy on the way towards Greensborough and a broken down truck in a middle lane didn’t help at all.  Happily, Vaughan and I made good progress thanks to lane filtering, and the vast majority of drivers did their best to make it easy for us.  I had a good day – thank for coming a long fellas and Les, thanks for doing TEC duty.      

Cheers

John Cook