St. George Motorcycle Club - Touring
Navigating to Nattai
TAfter a slow run up the pass we turned right and stopped to wait for the rest of the pack to arrive. As we sat on the edge of a corner, the rest of the group road up the road and straight past without a glance.
Oh Gosh! I said, I've got to turn around and catch them before they disappear up the back blocks of Wilton. So I chased them and got them turned around one by one before we had to send out the tracker dogs.
Besides almost losing most of the group then, we still had a fantastic ride on our day trip To Nattai. We had 9 bikes and 12 people front up for the 8.00 am start at Heathcote along with a big mix of bikes and riders, we even had a push bike rider turn up, but I didn't give him much chance of keeping up though.
A Yamaha FZ1 piloted by an experienced rider with a Yamaha Cruiser of some description, came along, with 2 Hondas of Shadow 750 and F4 600 variety, a lone Suzuki Boulevard and BMW R1100s joined the 3 Triumphs, with a Thunderbird Sport 885, one 955 and one 1050 Sprint ST's. A couple of pillion passengers came along for the fun and made up the extra numbers.
We left Heathcote and headed down the old Highway and with the group stretching out, we then had to plan our turn carefully at Bulli, cruise out to Appin and make sure all the riders headed down and up the pass where we come back to the previous scenario.
Another pass kept everybody busy for a while before we came to the trickiest turn of the day were we headed out a very little used back road to Menangle. I don't know if any other rider had been along this road before, but it was the sort of road that had them preparing and puckering for anything. It's bumpy, twisty and with bugger all traffic and it's a good open road diversion with a reasonable fun factor that's different from the normal route.
We headed back along Menangle Road for a while were we weaved and swerved around the twists and turns and eventually headed for Picton and a cuppa and snack at one of the many cafes there.
After we had finished, we fired up close to a thousand horsepower and headed down the road 50 meters and turned right to another open country back road, that sorted the group out a bit. It's a more open road with a few tricky corners and some of the less experienced riders dropped back a lot, while we all got great visuals from the scenery. There were another large group of bikes going the opposite way, so this is a popular road for the weekend warriors, along with plenty of other open roads in the area. We made our way to Oakdale, and waited for the group to arrive for our last turn before our final destination, Nattai or Lake Burragorang.
After a few more twists and turns we got to the entrance of the lookout area and found some humungous potholes that almost sent my pillion into orbit. The lookout area itself has changed completely since last time I was there and the view is definitely better but a lot less parking. That didn't really worry us as there were bugger all people there, so we wandered around had a look, took some photos and said our goodbyes as everybody would go different ways home.
It didn't take long for people to turn off this way and that as everybody lives in different areas and wanted to go home different ways.
We were back home about 2.00 pm even with a new diversion on the way home, so it was a fairly short ride and one that everybody enjoyed I think.
I've got an idea for the next ride, but if anybody has any ideas for a new destination, via out of the way roads, please let me know. I'll let everybody know about the next ride, if your on my email system, or in the magazine and website, so keep riding and stay upright.
Trumpy
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