CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A one-way ride of 190 km, Coffs Harbour to Armidale - roughly 2 h 39 in the saddle. The stops in between: Bellingen, Dorrigo and Ebor Falls. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 36 km this is Waterfall Way, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Coffs Harbour is where the Waterfall Way meets the sea, and the town has the easygoing, banana-and-surf character you expect from the mid-north coast of New South Wales. The Big Banana, opened in 1964 and often credited as Australia's first big roadside novelty, still stands beside the highway as a reminder of the plantations that once covered the hills. These days blueberries have mostly replaced bananas, but the sunny slopes are still there.
Read the complete Coffs Harbour write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Coffs Harbour is where the day begins. Next is Bellingen.
Bellingen is a town that took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up far better off. It sits on the Bellinger River in the hills behind Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales north coast, a small place of timber verandahs, bookshops, galleries and cafes, with a reputation for artists, potters, organic growers and people who moved up from Sydney and never went back. On a sunny morning the main street has a laid-back air that would be dull in a more pretentious place and is simply pleasant here.
Read the complete Bellingen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bellingen comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is Dorrigo.
Dorrigo is a quiet town of about a thousand people on a high plateau in northern New South Wales, a dairy and potato district that feels cool and green compared with the coast an hour below. The plateau is the edge of the old volcanic land that rose after the great Gondwana breakup, and it still catches the rain from the Pacific. The result is a rainforest that has survived as an island of tall, dripping trees, now protected in Dorrigo National Park and listed with other east-coast reserves as the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia. A short drive from the town you can walk a boardwalk through the canopy and look down on ferns and strangler figs.
Read the complete Dorrigo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 65 km into the recorded legs you reach Dorrigo. Next is Ebor Falls.
Cold air is the first thing you notice at Ebor, because you have climbed up from the subtropical coast onto the New England tableland and the climate has changed with you. The falls are on the Guy Fawkes River, a short walk from the Waterfall Way, and they drop in two stages over dark basalt into a gorge thick with tree ferns, ancient-looking eucalypts and mist. After rain, the noise carries up through the forest, and the sun can throw a faint rainbow across the spray.
Read the complete Ebor Falls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ebor Falls, late in the day. Next is Armidale.
Armidale sits on the New England tableland at close to a thousand metres, which means it feels cooler than anywhere else for hundreds of kilometres around. It is a handsome city of about twenty-four thousand people, with two cathedrals, wide streets lined with deciduous trees that turn gold and red in autumn, and a university that gives it a lively student feel. After the long climb from the coast on the Waterfall Way, it is a welcome place to stop, and it is a proper city, with every service a rider could want.
Read the complete Armidale write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Armidale. That is the ride.
Coffs Harbour → Bellingen is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bellingen → Dorrigo is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dorrigo → Ebor Falls is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ebor Falls → Armidale is 78 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.