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I now hate trees... 🙂
I'm in Far North Queensland and fancied a bit of RSF riding. No car means I have to get to the interesting stuff by bike, in this case a single speed Giant Bowery.
There's no equivalent to OSMaps, so I relied on online maps and found some interesting looking gravel rides.
The problem was the interesting stuff is up the range and it's somewhat suicidal trying to get there on the main road.
But that shouldn't deter a member of the RSF, should it? Not when there's a somewhat steep walking path going up about 1,500' in just over a mile. A quick H-a-B and the road would be mine.
The H-a-B was a bit rougher than I expected, it was through dense rainforest, i.e. jungle,
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Temperatures weren't too bad, around 29ºC but it definitely rated as one of the toughest H-a-Bs I've done even though it was so short. It was a great feeling to get to the top and hit the rideable stuff.
So I wasn't too thrilled to discover about 100m later that my first stretch of "gravel" road wasn't. Instead it was another 5 km of the sort of terrain I had been struggling through, just not so steep.
It's the hole in the jungle on the left, not the inviting track in the middle.
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It had some "good" bits, but that's relative.
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Instead of steepness I got a smorgasbord of ordinary vines, dangling wait-a-whiles trying to rip my throat out (think organic barbed wire), not forgetting to keep an eye out for stinging trees which inject a painful neurotoxin (painful, and lasts for months), and Australia's answer to the velociraptor, the cranky cassowary.
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Needless to say, I scratched the rest of the ride and went back via the suicidal main road where I only got nearly killed twice.
At least when I got to the descent part I was as fast as the cars so that bit was ok.
Of course, the obvious thing would have been to ask a local first, but nothing ventured etc... 🙂
But I've come away with a greater appreciation of our Ordnance Survey.
At least the trails are dry, you should see the rain we've had in Lancs this morning.
😉
So, not overbiked then lol
I did a lot of this in Mallorca, where at least nothing native tried to attack me. The main annoyance I ran into was a surfeit of big fences and “PRIVATE - no entry” signs, accompanied by me wondering if the wealthy sorts owning this land owned large dogs and had had prior vacations at Her Majesty’s pleasure...
I was actually looking for trails like the one you pushed up, so I could ride back down it or down a similar one the other side of the hill. My bike was substantially different to yours! 😉
Looks like the lost trail behind Swindon branch of Nationwide.
chiefgrooveguru
My bike was substantially different to yours!
I was bitterly disappointed in its performance.
It's sold as a track bike, and that was a track. It was useless.
Obviously I was taken in by false advertising... 🙂
It’s the hole in the jungle on the left, not the inviting track in the middle.
The hole in the jungle right beyond that ‘No LLS riders’ sign? 😎
What about the spider?
Malvern Star
The hole in the jungle right beyond that ‘No LLS riders’ sign?
That's the one.
The sign is a load of bollocks by modern eco fun-sponges who are actively closing off access to various parts of the bush on spurious grounds.
t's not possible to ride past that point anyway - well may for the odd 5m or so. In its early days (late 1800s) bicycles were used on it - Viet Cong style, not riding - as they went West or to the diggings, so as far as I'm concerned it's a bike track even though I carried the bike for its entirety.
BTW Australia was built on the bicycle. not the horse - it's worth finding books by Jim Fitzpatrick who has written about this in detail.
With autumn biting hard here at the moment you have no idea how envious I am!😁
Meanwhile I'm looking forward to getting back to Scotland where we have actual freedom and can ride where we chose, plus the whole country is air-conditioned 🙂