Southern Region Midweek ride report, Tuesday 8 January 2019

20 riders and pillion passengers met at the BP Officer on the Princes Freeway for the first midweek ride of 2019, and after the guest riders (including Paul White’s two sons) were introduced and we all caught up on each other’s news it was time to listen to Ed’s briefing.
We set off in cool and overcast conditions for a short blast along the Freeway before turning south and joining the South Gippsland Highway. This felt like going to Philip Island, but Ed soon took us into the network of winding rural back roads through the hills to emerge at Wonthaggi. Next we were close to Bass Strait and passing through Cape Paterson, arriving at Inverloch for our morning tea break after a ride of 120 km from the start. Inverloch was busy with summer holiday visitors but we found tables in the bakery where Nigel joined us.
Next objective was Meeniyan for lunch and to get there we followed Ed into more traffic-free back roads through Tarwin Lower, Liptrap and Foster with a short stretch of the S. Gippsland Highway. All the horizon was blue with smoke haze and the cloud cover continued to provide pleasantly cool conditions for riders and bikes. We had a leisurely lunch break at Meeniyan mostly at the Bread and Pickles cafe while occasional gleaming milk tankers and trucks full of sheep trundled past us down the main street. Greg’s Velocette was much admired and I was interested to catch up with Nigel and his T120 which I used to own.
Some sunshine was breaking through as we left Meeniyan and after more enjoyable riding we stopped near Tooradin to go our various ways homeward. Ian arrived a little later having fielded a muffler which he dutifully returned to it’s owner. Thanks Ed for a great day out riding the best of Gippsland’s biking roads, and thanks Ian for riding TEC.

Riders