Did the following ride today

It’s a spectacular ride, for about 20km from Athelstone to Chain of Ponds you follow the Torrens River, after all the rain last week it’s really flowing. Mostly Gorge Rd isn’t a difficult ride, but the climb up to the top of the dam is hard.

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That’s the only really steep bit though. It’s a fairly narrow road, but has a good surface and once you get past the dam there is not much traffic at all. The ride down through Cudlee Creek is really beautiful.
Gorge Rd meets the Adelaide-Mannum road between Chain of Ponds and Gumaracha. This is a much busier road, though for the most part is wider. There are a few narrow bits though. Also there’s some reasonable climbs, there’s one particularly nasty one into a cutting where I was really starting to suffer as I tried to ride as fast as possible to get past the narrow section (I think my legs still hadn’t recovered from a ride up the Crafers bikeway yesterday as well).

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I got a bit lost and came back down the wrong way, I meant to come down Lower North East Rd but missed the turnoff so ended up coming down North East Rd instead – not a particularly nice descent. It’s never very steep, but there’s lots of traffic and the road surface isn’t great, I suspect the Lower NE rd one would be a better option. I didn’t realise I’d gone the wrong way until I came down and couldn’t work out where Grand Junction Rd had gone!