Grant Harrod's Blog

Being a weekend we had no school visits, so tradition with TdC is to hold a team trial between the 10 sponsor teams – Woolworths (my team), Commonwealth Bank, Huawei, Optus, Spirit of Tasmania, Vittoria Coffee, LifeTech, Lexus & Harvey Norman.  This was scheduled to take place at the 40km mark, (so we could be suitably warmed up). With much anticipation (& sledging), each team went off in 30 sec intervals on a 8km course, (was planned to be 16km except the first 6k’s of the chosen course turned out to be under repair). Woolworths acquitted themselves very well coming home in 5th place, with Team Lexus taking out the honors. We all then gathered in a local paddock for morning tea….to be entertained by a crop dusting plane which decided to land next to us, and following discussions with our channel 7 tv crew, then put on a great display of ‘very’ low level flying buzzing the peloton rolling up the road…hopefully some great footage to further promote the tour!

We then headed 70ks towards the coast arriving at the very beautiful Lake Leake, for a very late lunch. Following which we had 35ks including a great descent into Swansea.

Swansea is a part of the Frecinet peninsula which has a long standing French connection, with many of the early settlers in this area being of French extraction and the French flag continues to be flown.

We held another community dinner with the Swansea locals turning out in great support….including the local mayor re splendid in his mayoral gown! The local charity we selected to receive our $5k community cheque, was the Tasmanian Skin Cancer Council, which is very fitting as close friend and my inspiration to participate in the tour, Erik Mather, passed away 2.5 years ago from melanoma cancer.

9 days on the road, 1,440kms completed, early morning starts, and sleeping in shared accommodation, is taken its toll on the group. But the anticipation of our last day and opportunity to see friends & family has lifted spirits. So we are all  looking forward to getting through the final 134kms, to complete our journey to Hobart. Congratulations to all the Tasmanians who have warmly welcomed us, pulling over to cheer us on & donate to our cancer fund raising. We have now raised $2.4m, which is an incredible accomplishment and puts us in a great position to reach our target of $3m by the end of the financial year.