Ceduna to Port Augusta - Mon 11th July

One of the tracks that I really wanted to do on this return leg was Goog's track.  It head north of Ceduna and is a road that crosses a lot of sand dunes - some people call it a smaller version of the Simpson desert.  However, after having a few issues doing the short stint of sand to the Eyre Bird Observatory, and also as I would be doing it solo, I decided to give it a miss.  I was a bit disappointed in not having a go at it, but I thought better of doing it solo after reading a few things about how far and how tough it was going to be - basically I wussed out. I'll just have to con someone into doing it with me some other time.  It turns out it was a good idea as I was to find out later today.
The start of the day was, can you guess?  Bloody cold, wet and overcast.  I was prepared to run the whole day on the bitumen - I had had enough of the crummy weather, although I'm sure it could've been a lot worse.  By the time I'd done 75 kms, I came to the small town of Wirrulla where I thought I'd have a go at some dirt roads through to Iron Knob.  It was a fairly major dirt road, but did become fairly sandy at some points - much more enjoyable than the bitumen with some pretty cool scenery.  Soon I started to pass through the edges of the Gawler ranges.  Surprised a few more emus and roos as well.
I passed a couple of ruins, and later on a submarine - the things you see in the outback!  During the early stages of the dirt road after Wirrulla I had started to get a twinge in my left quad - the beginnings of which had started to happen on Sunday.  Whenever I shifted up through the gears I would experience a sharp pain.  Throughout the day this got pretty bad - so much so that I'd either go slow if I'd shifted down so that I wouldn't have to shift up again - or, keep the pace up a bit so that I wouldn't have to slow down, shift down, and then have to shift up again.  Stopped a few times just to stretch the leg as the pain was starting to hang around even when I wasn't shifting up.  It was at this point that I was pretty happy I had decided not to do Goog's track as I would've been going up and down gears a hundred more times than I was on this dirt road.
I arrived at Iron Knob pretty keen to have a break and something to eat except it appeared that pretty much everything was shut down - the Motel, Servo, Newsagent all gone.  Turned around and headed into Port Augsta which was another 70kms away - leg still hurting like hell.  Motelled (is that a word?) it again - getting soft.