It rained overnight and we woke up to an overcast day.  We got on the road at 9am and within 10 minutes the road started to go up.  We climbed up 700m through dense forest.  As we approached the saddle, a place called The Gap at 955m, the trees started to get shorter with altitude and we entered the clouds.  The mist was wet but as we were climbing it was refreshing as it was hot work.

From the top we dropped down to the collection of houses called Bonang.  It was freezing going downhill and was cold when we arrived at Bonang.  We stopped and had lunch and warmed up.  Bonang was our original destination for day 2 in the mountains but we had made good progress yesterday and great progress this morning.  So we decided to push on to Delegate in NSW.  The road rose up again through forest from Bonang to the state border.  As soon as we crossed the border the scenery changed from trees to rolling open grass farmland similar to North Canterbury in NZ.

We made to Delegate at 3pm very happy but tired.  We checked into the Delegate Hotel, a classic friendly country hotel.  The hotel wasn’t serving dinner on Sunday night so the bar lady phoned the café across the street and they cooked us a great vegetarian dinner, for $9 each.

It was a great day biking on a superb road.  We can highly recommend the Bonang highway to other cyclists as a great way to travel between Gippsland and Southern NSW.

Highlight of the day: Biking up the big hill through magnificent forest.

The Bonang Highway in the mist.

The Victoria/NSW border on the Bonang Highway