Bicycle Touring Trip : Sitiawan - Lumut

I am blessed to grow up in a bit of an outdoor crazy family and we had a good share of a crazy family adventure by going on a bicycle touring trip last week. After going for a round island cycling trip at Pangkor Island years ago, we had always thought of planning for a cycling road trip and thank god, my brother finally got the bicycles fixed. We only had three remaining bicycles out of probably about five bicycles which are the ones we used back in the 90's to travel to school everyday. I must say they are all  still in good running conditions after some tires fix and oiling. The oldest bike has to be my dad's Shimano's racing bike. God knows from which era the bike comes from. It either should be around circa late 70's or early 80's. Gosh, that is ancient!

[caption id="attachment_1864" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="My trusty old bike. Lost the rear reflector thingy during this trip. "][/caption]

So with 3 persons (my siblings and I) on the bicycles while my parents were happily riding on the escort motorbike - the notoriously 'powerful' Honda Cub, haha, we kicked off from our home in Sitiawan heading towards Lumut. We prefer to use short cuts and back roads because there will be less traffic and more to venture around to.

Below is the list of  places that we went along the way on our bicycles kicking off from Sitiawan to reach our destination Lumut and back home again to Sitiawan:

• Sitiwan (Home) - back road Jln Kg. Bintang heading to Maybank Manjung -  Manjung Stadium

• From the Stadium, push on straight through the housing areas in Manjung and at one turning take right heading to Teluk Rubiah

• We somehow went through Kg. Dato Seri Kamaruddin and was awestruck when we saw a really huge, new school in Manjung which is the SMK Kg. Dato Seri Kamaruddin. I must say the kids who go to school there are a lucky bunch because that school is so huge and new. I bet the facilities are great too.

• From the school, we kind of lost our way and went through a row of houses that leads to a dead end. Made a turn around and went on another wrong turn into a palm oil plantation. We got back on track by going straight through the dirt road with lots of holes ( a good one for mountain bikes), got chased for a while by a super territorial dog, saw two men on a kapchai trying to catch a beautiful blue bird near the bushes and we came up to a corner junction towards TNB Manjung Power Plant. We didn't go further up to the power plant ( we went only up until the power plant signboard, haha) and along the way we past by the Teluk Rubiah PLKN camp. There were no kids at the camp at that time.

• As we couldn't find a road from Manjung to exit at a housing area opposite the Tamil school at Pundut, we had to make a u-turn, head back to the main Manjung intersection near the Manjung Mosque.

• Took a left turn and cycled straight all the way to Lumut, cycling along the Jln Iskandar Shah road. At one of the traffic lights ahead near the quarry area, there was an accident but no one was injured. There was also a lorry load of the lion dance team with drumming away playfully on the lorry.

A couple of stops later and with a sore bottom by now, we reached the little hilly road at Lumut. At that time there was a bit of a commotion going about with my sister and my brother. The next thing that I knew, I zoomed past them, I was ahead alone and saw my sister sitting as a pillion rider on the Honda Cub whilst my mum took over the bicycle instead. Haha. The story is my sister hit a huge rock with the bike because she was trying to avoid from hitting the rear end of my brother's bike. Gosh!

• A quick cooling and eating pit stop at KFC Lumut. Rested for about 40 minutes and went back to Sitiawan cycling along the Lumut Esplanade and the yatch club. Snapped some pictures and it was almost noon by then so we stopped less and cycled more.


• We pushed forward and took a left turn at the Manjung - Teluk Batik intersection, cycling along towards the Taman Paya Bakau Lumut (Lumut Mangrove Swamp Park) - Taman Samudera Manjung - Billion - Manjung Mosque - joining back to the road we came earlier (that will be the road around the Fasa something? housing area, haha)


• Cycled through the highway (some sort of a highway) that leads straight to Kg. Koh , stopped at a plant nursery along the road (haha) and finally took a left to Jln Kg. Bintang and to Home!

All in all the total duration and distance for our little Sitiawan-Manjung-Teluk Rubiah-Lumut-Manjung-Sitiawan Bicycle Touring Trip are:

Duration : Sitiawan - Manjung - Teluk Rubiah -Lumut : 1.47 hour (lots of breaks and about 47 min stop at KFC)

Lumut - Manjung - Sitiawan: 1.06 hour (not much stops, only stop for quick drinks)

Total duration undertaken : 3.35hour (inclusive of rests and stops)

Total distance undertaken : A rough estimation of about 30KM. It could be less.

Outcome gained from the Bicycle Touring Trip : Is a healthy, fun family cycling activity. Need to adjust the height of the seat to avoid sore legs and need to change all seats for a wider, more comfy versions to minimize sore bottoms. Haha.

Will we do this often soon? Yeah, we probably will next time around. :)