Hamish and Joan Blanch have lost count of the kilometres they have cycled across the globe and have just added another 3,000km in crossing the Nullarbor Plain between Adelaide and Perth.
During the five-week mission to get to their son’s wedding in Perth they tackled flies, road trains and running out of water, yet experienced the incredible vastness of the plain and spectacular sunrises and sunsets.
It was the tenth long-distance cycling tour for the Richmond couple who set out on their first tour nearly 50 years ago and plan an annual long-distance trip.
Over the years, they have crisscrossed North America and Canada on their bikes, including the Trans America Trail, explored Europe, cycled in near-freezing temperatures across Iceland despite it being summer, and island-hopped from the Shetland Islands down to Scotland.
In between, they have cycled the length and breadth of New Zealand keeping bike fit for their next adventure.
This year was the Nullarbor Plain where they carried up to 12 litres of water on their pedal-powered Surly Long Haul Trucker touring bikes.
As they travelled through the waterless terrain it could be as far as 200km to the next roadhouse where they could refill their water, camping each night in the sparse landscape beside the road.
“You need some pre-planning and it’s all about water,” Hamish says. “There’s no surface water at all and we totally relied on roadhouses.”
During the entire trip they saw little wildlife in the almost treeless landscape.
“We saw one snake that ran away and a fat snake that was roadkill. But we did get March flies that bite,” Joan says. “They seem to bite through your clothes.”
“You’re biking 18 to 20km per hour and the flies still catch up with you,” Hamish adds. “It’s pretty hard to out-bike the flies.”
He says the bike trip is not for the faint-hearted because road trains up to 52m in length are motoring past and there are seldom sealed shoulders for cyclists to evade them.
All that was part of the challenge though and Hamish, 68, and Joan, 67, averaged 84km a day and up to 125km.
“That was a long day,” Joan says. “You have to work with your mind and just do one day at a time.”
It sounds a grind, but they say it was well worth it to experience the vastness of the country and the sunrises and sunsets.
Each day they were on the road before sunrise which meant they “saw a lot of dawns”.
After 10 overseas cycle tours they have their packing down to a fine art, carrying about 20kg of gear to cover the extremes in weather as well as camping equipment and bike repairs – because in the Nullarbor Plain there are no bike shops within a few hundred kilometres.
The longest distance they have cycled overseas was 11,500km across the top of North America and down the east coast.
Next year they are planning to return to North America to cycle from Houston to Mississippi and north to the Great Lakes, a trip that will cover about 3,500km.
One of the biggest hassles organising a bike trip overseas is packing bikes up and carting them through airports, which is why they have three sets of bikes in storage in different countries.
Hamish says they will keep exploring the world on their bikes for as long as they can bike and Joan says it will “just be a bit less kilometres each day”.
