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I plan to ride a mountain bike through the Blue Tiers in Tasmania this Sunday. It’s a picturesque, remote alpine area of north-eastern Tasmania that is supposed to be well worth the effort.
The only problem is that I’ll probably be riding it alone, and I’ve never been there before.
So to be on the safe side, I’m publishing my proposed route here, with some checkpoints along the way, and I’ll update my twitter feed with a photo from those checkpoints so that (if you’re interested) you can keep an eye on where I’m up to. If I fall off the bike, or get abducted by aliens, at least you’ll know how far I got and where I plan to go.
I’ll be leaving the Weldborough Hotel at about 10.30am and aim to be back by about 3pm.
The checkpoints are:
- Weldborough Hotel. 0km. 10:30am
- Lotta Rd Turnoff. 6.4km. 11:00am
- Town of Lotta. 14.2km. 11:45am
- Poimena School Site. 17.8km. 12:30pm
- Emu Road. 22.4km. 1:30pm
- Weldborough Hotel. 30km. 2:30pm
Here’s the map
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I’m really looking forward to it, and hope to share some great photos.
I’ll be working in Launceston for the next week, so I thought I’d come down a day and a bit earlier and explore the place by mountain bike.
I hired a basic hardtail bike from a local shop, donned my cold weather gear, and took off into the hills on this beautiful cloudless late autumn day.
The first part of the trip was up to Trevallyn Reserve which is perched atop some of the hills to the west of town.
The reserve has some pretty steep and rocky trails which were hard work to negotiate, but worth the effort. The view down the river towards the dam is spectacular.
After a quick break, I then headed to the Kate Reed reserve to the south of town. This has a lot more narrow single track than Trevallyn, and it was here I suffered a pretty nasty “Gumby Stack” where I fell off my bike for no reason other than I couldn’t pull my feet out of my clip-in pedals. Luckily my shoulder survived the fall and I have no broken bones.
I’ve never ridden in such cold weather before. It takes a lot more preparation than I’m used to. And you still get hot, and cold, and wet with perspiration.
But it’s a great way to explore a city. I’ll definitely try this again!
      
 
I had a great time in Sydney today at a client’s Christmas Party.
We had lunch at Luna Park, so I took a few minutes out to take a few photos of this fun place.
The smiley clown looking guy had a girl with him. I told her I was really Seven years old and just looked old, and would she take my picture please.
As you can see she obliged!
   
Here’s some pictures of our ride on the Moore-Linville-Benarkin section of the Brisbane Valley Rail Trail yesterday.
It took us a couple of hours to get up the mountain on the old railway line, and about 30 minutes to ride down the highway, racing off the cars and trucks.
The salad roll I had in the Benarkin Store was the best I’ve ever had. I can’t beleive how hungry I got after two hours riding.
Benarkin is the highest point on the ride. We had the option of riding another 5km down into Blackbutt and back, but decided against it.
Steve B did really well on the ride. His seat wasn’t adjusted properly, so partway through the ride he was pretty sore and ended up having to stand on his pedals quite frequently to get some relief. To his credit he persevered. Harrison did well too. Even though the climb was gradual, it was unrelenting. After a couple of hours, looking up the line at another kilometre of long slow hill climb can be quite depressing. He kept riding which is what counts.
The other thing that made the ride hard work is that we came across lots of locked gates. So we had to lift the bikes over the gates, and climb over.
And then there’s the ravines. When Qld Rail ripped up the rails, they also took out the bridges. So instead of rolling over bridges, we had to ride down steep gullies and up the other side. It’s fun – what Mountain Bikes are made for. We had to be careful riding down and push like crazy to pedal out of the ravine. If we didn’t keep our momentum up we’d end up having to walk the bike out of the gully which is harder than pedalling out.
At the top, we decided we didn’t want to battle the deep gullies and locked gates again, so we rode the hghway down. In some places the highway is pretty steep and we found ourselves keeping pace with the cars. It’s exciting, but there’s no room for mistakes. Luckily we made it without any incidents.
As usual on long rides, the battery on my N95 mobile phone / gps ran out. So I’m very thankful to Steve G for giving me a copy of the GPS data from his Garmin so I could share the map below.
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Here’s the latest map of Rachel’s journey to date.
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A postcard from friend Rachel who’s currently touring around Australia.
Rachel says at this time of year south-western Australia is warm during the day but still nice and cool at night. Ideal spring weather.
The Margaret River region of WA is one of Australia’s premier wine-making districts. It also has some fantastic beaches, and some significant sites of Early European settlement.
It is thought that Margaret River is named after Margaret Wyche, who was a cousin of the founder of nearby Busselton, John Garrett Bussel.
A postcard from friend Rachel who’s currently touring around Australia.
This has to be one of the longest wooden jetties in the world. In fact it IS the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere – so long that you need to catch a train to get to the end of it.
Busselton is a town in the south west region of Western Australia with a population of about 20,000.
A postcard from friend Rachel who’s currently touring around Australia.
She’s currently worried about a leak in the van she’s driving, and doesn’t know where to look to fix it.
Pay someone else, Rach!
The French Vessel Naturaliste visited this cape in 1801. It was visited earlier by the Dutch vessel Leeuwin in 1627, but there are no records which remain today.
La Naturaliste, the ship, under Captain Hamelin was part of a French expedition led by Nicholas Baudin which explored Australian waters around 1801. She was a bomb-corvette which Baudin sent back to France in 1801 with numerous Australian natural specimens.
The headland itself is at the western edge of Geographe Bay, in the south-western region of Western Australia.
  
Our friend, Rachel is currently driving around Australia.
She has promised to send us postcards of her journey, and I’ve promised to scan them and put them on a map for her so she has a record of where she has been.
Here’s the first few postcards which arrived recently, as well as a map showing where they’re from.
Safe journey, Rach!
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