Riding from Perth to Fremantle….the scenic tour.

When I was planning this hitlist task, in my mind I was thinking that it was only 20km there, fairly flat, shouldn’t be too difficult.  I obtained the map for this ride from The Department of Transport website.  It looked easy to negotiate and recommended timeframes were anywhere between 40 minutes and two hours depending on your fitness level.  On my trusty exercise bike I was knocking over 20km in 40 minutes, no problems.  As we all know an exercise bike is nothing like riding outside, so I thought I would allow an hour there, leisurely lunch…latte….then an hour home.  Even if I left at 10am I would still be home comfortably around 1pm, plenty of time to pick the kids up from school.  What could possibly go wrong with this plan??

I had decided that I would park in South Perth at the Coode St jetty, as it was an easy drive from the Perth Hills and I love that stretch along the Swan River, so pretty.  I thought it would be a fairly simple matter to hook up with the riding path from this point.  Initially I had convinced a local to come with me but things came up and it didn’t happen so I roped my cousin in at the last minute (he had just driven over 5000km from North Queensland to move to Perth a couple of days beforehand, so a local he was not!)

Now the day didn’t start as planned as the day was grey, drizzly, and overcast when the day before had been spectacular.  I dropped the kids off at school and my cousin and I ummed and ahhhed about whether to go but we sucked it up and went anyway, a little rain never hurt anyone!  We had a quick look at the map again, figured we would be able to work it out, packed our camelpak’s, loaded the bikes and off we went.  I will let the pictures tell the story!

Getting ready to ride….quietly confident.

Too cool for school, haha.

First pit stop to pump up a tyre…random windmill.

Remember how I mentioned we took a quick look at the map and figured we would be right?? Well we weren’t.  We got lost in the big city and looked really cool riding our MTB’s through the streets. We did get a map and found the bike path we needed! 45minutes down and haven’t even left the city.

If you happen to try this ride and you see these…STOP….you have gone too far and you will only get to the end of the docks riding against ridiculous headwind where if you stop pedalling you will literally stop dead. Then you get to turn around and ride back…and you will be starving after riding for hours!!

It was a lovely ride, just give yourself plenty of time. It took us over two hours with plenty of wrong turns on the way there and only took us just over an hour on the way home.   We ended up coming back through Kings Park which I recommend.  And yes, I made it back in time to pick the kids up…just.

Selfie to prove I actually did ride…and I had to laugh at my cousin in the background…I think I broke him.