The ‘campsite’ was beautiful when we woke up this morning. I say campsite loosely – it was in fact a picnic area with no camping signs… which we promptly ignored given how nice the spot was (toilet, picnic tables and a shelter, and set right back off the road). There was a lovely amount of fog hanging around – enough to defuse the light and make it all misty, but not enough to make everything damp.

We’d shared the picnic area with an older couple in a little campervan. We got to chatting and found our that he was a retired ranger and she a teacher. Turns out they had spent 9 months travelling through Europe (also in a campervan), and spent the majority of it free-camping (which was music to our ears). They kindly offered us some water, which we eagerly accepted – seeing as the alternative was to try and filter out the mosquito larvae that were residing in the campsites tank water.

We had a fairly easy day ahead of us, with only 37kms all up. Even scaling the hill up into Woodenbong wasn’t too bad. We cruised on into Woodenbong (pop. 500) at about 2:30pm, and after stocking up on some supplies for dinner from the local service station / grocer, went and checked out the Woodenbong pub (which Matt has a soft spot for – although much to his disappointment, the colourful publican was nowhere to be seen). Cold beer really does go down well when you have been cycling.

We set up camp at the local campsite (a small grassy patch of ground sandwiched between the local pool and football field). Hot showers were a dollar, and much to our surprise, the dollar went a really long way – we were convinced it lasted about 10 minutes (although the cloth washes out of a bucket over the past couple of days could have skewed our perceptions).

We’re now drinking hot chocolate watching the sun go down over the horizon.