I hired a basic hardtail bike from a local shop, donned my cold weather gear, and took off into the hills on this beautiful cloudless late autumn day.

The first part of the trip was up to Trevallyn Reserve which is perched atop some of the hills to the west of town.

The reserve has some pretty steep and rocky trails which were hard work to negotiate, but worth the effort. The view down the river towards the dam is spectacular.

After a quick break, I then headed to the Kate Reed reserve to the south of town. This has a lot more narrow single track than Trevallyn, and it was here I suffered a pretty nasty “Gumby Stack” where I fell off my bike for no reason other than I couldn’t pull my feet out of my clip-in pedals. Luckily my shoulder survived the fall and I have no broken bones.

I’ve never ridden in such cold weather before. It takes a lot more preparation than I’m used to. And you still get hot, and cold, and wet with perspiration.

But it’s a great way to explore a city. I’ll definitely try this again!

We had lunch at Luna Park, so I took a few minutes out to take a few photos of this fun place.

The smiley clown looking guy had a girl with him. I told her I was really Seven years old and just looked old, and would she take my picture please.

As you can see she obliged!

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She has promised to send us postcards of her journey, and I’ve promised to scan them and put them on a map for her so she has a record of where she has been.

Here’s the first few postcards which arrived recently, as well as a map showing where they’re from.

Safe journey, Rach!

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A postcrossing post card from Claus in Hamburg.

Claus says that when QM2 is in town, people go crazy, and over a million people may watch her.

She looks beautiful, Claus.

Thanks for the postcard!

A postcrossing post card from Judit in Belgium

The ship in the picture is “Carina” (you might be able to see the name КАРИНА in cyrillic on her bow).

Length: 122m, 7600GRT, 328 passengers.

She is currently known as “Rochale One” and operates as a static ship for student accommodation in Amsterdam.

She was built in Nantes, France in 1977 for the then Soviet government and named “Aywasowski”. She operated cruises out of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

She was renamed Carina after she was bought by German company Phoenix Reisen in 1997. She changed hands again in 2000 and was renamed “Primexpress Island”, operating out of Cyprus.

The ship was impounded in the port of Limassol (Cyprus) because of unpaid bills.

She was eventually purchased by a consortium of three Dutch housing companies acquired the vessel, towed it to Amsterdam and configured it for use as hotel accommodation for students.

Her engines are kept in working order, so she is capable of sailing as and when needed.

Thanks for the fascinating postcard, Judit!

RU-62200

A postcrossing postcard from Alla who lives in Vladivostok and actually studies at the University of Southern Qld.

Vladivostok is Russia’s largest pacific sea port, and home to the Russian Pacific Fleet. It is located near to the Russian border with China and North Korea.

Among the numerous naval vessels, you can see two cruise ships. The one on the left is Regal Princess, which was renamed Pacific Dawn in 2007. I am not able to name the cruise ship on the right.  My friend Geoff from Oz Cruise Club tells me the ship on the right is Norwegian Wind (now Superstar Aquarius), which cruises the Asia Pacific region most of the year.

Thanks for the postcard, Alla!

The thing I enjoyed most about it was being able to share it with Jonathan, see him experience the magic of his first cruise.

Thanks for being a great travel companion, Jonno!

Jonathan and I had a great time. It was his first cruise, and I really enjoyed sharing the experience with him.

For those of you who haven’t been following my updates on Twitter and Facebook, here’s a few pictures and videos you might be interested in.

By the way, I found it really easy to post photo and video updates via twitter using my mobile phone. Last cruise I tried blogging but that needed lots of keying via the little keypad on the phone, and ended up taking ages. Tweeting was much easier.

Legend has it that Sir Richard Branson once owned these cows.

Vandals stole the horns from one of the cows, and the legs from another one, but they still remain an excellent example of art in public spaces.

These cows have “lived” in this field close to the centre of Launceston, Tasmania for over a year, and (I think) look fantastic.

Someone told me that one morning, the people of Launceston awoke to find the cows had been moved to the middle of the local highway, aparently directing traffic.

Like the crazy bloke in the video says…. “Moo!”.