I had never cycled hundreds of kilometres of desert highway before.
The villages were not pretty, but functional strings of outback services, abandoned hotels and derelict brick buildings, relicts of a bustling agricultural region that has upscaled to mega-farms run by multinationals. Vineyards and orchards were vast and fenced, statements of uniformity and globalisation, their water-sprinkled green an unhealthy paradox in a desert. Ghostly tree stumps were drowned in reservoirs. It was a highway of RV’s and crop-laiden juggernauts. We would discover that the Murray River Trail was no riverbank cycle path. The journey became different to any I had taken before. Our journey led us to lines of tar, as straight as straight can be, hundreds of kilometres of nothing but crops and bush. But the Australian Alps quickly fell away, and from day three onwards, the river falls only two hundred metres in two thousand kilometres. The peaks and troughs inspire the life in me. I would discover that riding in Australia would be a little different to the sketch in my mind! I have a way of sketching the shapes of a cycle journey, but rather than getting the lines and details accurate, I wash the pencil over with watercolour ideas.
#Murray bike full
He was finding it almost impossible to pedal uphill and balance with full panniers and a trailer with my wheelchair balanced on top. Alpine climbs is not what we had anticipated, and I saw the anxiety on my friend Doug’s face as he strained to pedal his heavily laden bike. In contrast, the road climbed and contorted through eucalyptus giants, their sharp aroma unfortunately not infusing our muscles. We were reminded that the only thing to travel rapidly downhill from the spring of a river, is the water. I had been fortunate enough to win the ‘Journey of a Lifetime’ opportunity, and had my companion Doug crouched in the middle of the river, feet wet, with a fluffy microphone plunged towards the bubbling sounds of the upper Murray. I at last found myself and my friend beneath Mt Kosciuszko, Australia’s highest mountain (2,228m) and the watershed of the Murray River. The Murray River offered a spark that I wanted to light. My expectations were fuzzy, but I knew I needed fresh perspective. With one day to the closing date, I had a busy creative task on my hands, but I knew this was an opportunity to be seized. Offered by BBC Radio 4 and The Royal Geographical Society, the combination of travel, storytelling, exploration and radio was irresistible. It was an invitation for applications to make a radio travel documentary. The opportunity dropped into my inbox, the subject heading ‘Journey of a Lifetime’. Don’t get me wrong, my bike is an extension of my body and brings a recipe of life-sustaining ingredients, but this time I needed something different. I wanted to cycle it, but I didn’t want just another long ride.Įight years of being a Paralympic cyclist and a lifetime of riding a bike, I felt ridden out for riding’s sake. I imagined the ‘Murray River Trail’ as a marked cycle trail along the riverbank, through eucalyptus forest and wetlands, vineyards and orchards, circumnavigating lakes and pretty villages. Her story led me to learn more about the river, and through that I felt a metaphorical kinship with it. The Murray River had first captured my attention when I heard of one woman’s incredible feat, swimming its 2820km meandering length. For a year or more I had been feeling like the Murray River…empty, a little stagnant, blocked, my energy like water struggling to flow. But it has felt more of a journey of being slain than one to glory.Īll the hard training, the sense of pressure and the focus took its toll on me.
It seems that the journey to a gold medal somehow embodies the meat of a cultural narrative: man or woman fights in the face of adversity, never gives up, and eventually achieves their wildest dream.
Since winning a Paralympic gold medal in Rio de Janeiro, 2016, the world seemed to hold me in a different way, as if I were somehow more ‘Mighty’ than before. In my vivid imagination, I had things in common with the Murray River. In a battle to maintain flow, dredgers clear its mouth of sand and its man-made lakes of sludge.Īs man tampers and attempts to balance demands on the water, the rivers floodplains are starved and the basin it nourishes becoming more saline, less able to sustain life…let alone cycle tourists! It begins as little more than a trickle and becomes a slow-moving narrow ribbon, a murky algal green, it’s flow blocked by dams and weirs.
#Murray bike torrent
It is hardly a torrent of powerful turquoise rushing from the Snowy Mountains to the Southern Ocean. ‘The Mighty Murray’ River didn’t seem so mighty. Safe roads, traffic offences and the law.What to do if you have a cycling crash?.Getting sponsorship to cycle for Cycling UK.