Byron Bay to Coffs Harbour, the "back way", Sept. 2017

Over the days 23-25 September 2017 (and some other days to investigate alternate routes), I cycled the roughly 300 km from Byron Bay to Coffs Harbour.

This is the track I followed and the actual path I took. Click on the map (which opens in a new tab) to zoom in and pan around.

The plan was not to take the shortest, nor easiest route, but someone's interesting mixture of easy and tough terrain via back-roads and tracks where possible - away from car and truck traffic. My main aim was to get a feel for the country and the terrain while never being too far from civilisation for me to be in a dangerous situation (except possibly for snake bites!).

My bike, a mid 1990s Cannondale F600 with 10-speed cluster (upgraded from 7-speed) and with front-wheel disc upgrade.

My track recording device, a Bryton 310 attached to my handlebar.

My Garmin GPSmap62, also attached to my handlebar, tells me if I'm on the track I'm following.

My bike also has a (Shutter Precision) front hub dynamo and 2.2" wide MAXXIS Icon tyres. I added front and rear racks and a small back-pack is cable tied securely to the front rack. Although the bike has a HeadShok front suspension - I used it disabled, relying on the tyres for shock absorption.

This story contains quite a few Mbytes worth of images (which load immediately you access the page) and may take a while to load if you have a slow internet connection, so, to make this story a little more manageable I've broken it into two parts continue reading page 1 here (page 2 is here).