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What do 6 adults, 2 eight year olds, 3 six year olds, one 4 and one 3 year old - do on almost a week of Fridays?
It does not get much better than this - 3 families on two Bike Friday Tripletandems, 2 tandems and 2 singles (one with tagalong) touring the old goldfields towns of central Victoria, Australia, on a variety of long bikes in a week of superb Autumn (Fall) weather. Clunes (biggest ice creams around), Maryborough (gold panning), Avoca (Pyrenees wineries), Beaufort then back to Lake Burrumbeet (what lake? Empty due to the drought!) where the cars had been left.
For 5 of us, this was the first time that we had camped while cycle touring - and the first time that we had carried tents, sleeping bags and billies as well as the rest of the paraphernalia. All our gear was stashed into 2 trailers (one behind each BF Triple tandem) and a variety of panniers.
Distance was not the main priority, with kids in tow it was the smaller things in life like toilet stops, bakery stops, cafe stops, rock collection, stick collection and bone collection stops. One of the highlights was Fiona and Jeanette (fortunately on the singles) narrowly avoiding running down 2 kangaroos who had stopped to gawk at the procession.
The kids (all stokers, no captains) all worked hard, although at times it did seem as though we went faster on the Triple when they had their feet out of the toe clips.
Almost no head winds, a few hills (one very decent one that had us all walking up, on the last day), very few cars around during the week, total fire ban (no fires in the open air - temperatures around 35?C) on two of the days which meant checking out the local swimming pools - chilly! And some lovely wines while cycling around the Pyrenees near Avoca.
Thanks BF for helping us to keep family touring possible with 3 & 2 kids respectively!
- Rowan, Fiona, Olivia, Brigit and Macgregor (Doyle) and Rob, Jeanette, Oliver and Byron (Dexter)
For more information, follow this link http://www/bikefriday.com/bf/tandemprimer.