The lesson of the weekend was, don't go riding with a man who chooses his routes using bushwalking maps...
I'm no mountain biker and I certainly don't have mountain bike equipment, which is why I carefully checked that the Audax Beechworth Boomers dirt series rides would be do-able on my hybrid. "Sure", Chris responded, "someone did it on a road bike last year." Suitably reassured, I put plans in place to base the family in Wangaratta for the weekend.
The first
The first ride on Saturday was 35km around the back of Beechworth. Described by Chris as gently undulating
and a good family ride
, even Gangnails was convinced and decided to join me for this leg. Starting off through the Beechworth Gorge was a nice touch, plunging down and then climbing back up on well-made bitumen and gravel roads made us feel comfortable about what was ahead. But Gangnails, more accustomed to the billiard table flats aroung Wang, was starting to get a bit nervous.
Flat Rock Road was in pretty good condition but its undulations gave Gangnails a renewed respect for the road, being more used to hurtling along it in a car. The out-and-back section to Nieoff Road brought us to a gate and a tantalising glimpse of the well-made gravel roads in the state forest—but they weren't on the agenda today.
Back to the Beechworth Road then cross-country via some other back roads to pick up the Rail Trail a few kilometres out of Beechie brought us up to the full distance. A short stretch of mud on this section showed me a fundamental difference between your suburban hybrid and your true moutain bike: clearance. Manual removal of sticky clay was required—not even a quick splash through a nicely running creek was enough to clear it out. Well, you live and learn.
The second
After coffee and assorted carbos at the Beechworth Bakery, we were off again for the 70km route. Gangnails bailed-out and headed for home with some excess gear that I wouldn't need and my riding gloves, which I would need.
We took a fairly easy way out of town, hit a bit of single track (I'm sure we passed a sign that described it as a walking track) and then took the back way to Stanley. From here it was pretty much all up hill to Mt Stanley but for much of the way I was quite happy with how I was going on the wide, smooth forestry roads. But not long after we entered the Stanley Reserve the road surface changed markedly—we're talking "dry weather only" roads here, rough and stony and increasingly steep. At one point on the ascent I had to stop for a break, not because the legs gave out but to gasp and gasp for air. I was pretty darn grateful to get to the top and tuck into the little bit of Beechworth Bakery that I'd brought with me.
At the top, someone said that if you could survive that climb you'd have no trouble at all getting up Mt Buffalo. A big call, perhaps?
The break at the top was probably a too long and I was cooling a bit by the time a small bunch of us hit the descent. Going down was not as much fun as it should have been for me: it was rough and without mountain bike suspension, I was having trouble hanging on. I was being juddered so hard that at one point I couldn't focus on the track in front of me (is that normal for mountain biking?); I considered this a bad thing and decided to sit a bit harder on the brakes, which slowed things up considerably.
One of the better roads
It was down, down, down, then up, up, up back to Stanley and a well-earned snack from the General Store.
Chris described the next bit as more seriously undulating
, and he wasn't joking. Initially we were on deserted forestry roads again (well, deserted apart from three rednecks in a ute who thought it would be fun to buzz the group for awhile, but dangerous though they are clowns like that get bored quickly) but the track soon became what Chris desribed at a true ridge road
: up and down and up and down in a serious of short, sharp hills. At the tail end of a day's riding, my legs just didn't have it in them and I had to jump off and walk a few of them. The incline up to Flagstaff Hill was ridiculous and although I started out well, I just couldn't engage a low enough gear and had to push it to the top here too.
Retracing our route from Flagstaff Hill didn't seem quite as bad as the outward journey: I only had to hop off the bike once, but I think I'd started to take a devil-may-care attitude to my descents, which probably wasn't all that smart.
The rest of the ride was relatively pleasant, taking Six Mile Road and Lady Newton Drive to Murmungee Lookout then across to the Rail Trail and back to base. It must have been getting a bit later than we realised, because we startled a few wallabies as we screamed down the hill from the lookout.
Gangnails was back in Beechie when I arrived and we adjourned to the Beechworth Brewery where I gratefully necked a few of the local brews—not a bad finish to the day.
The third
While I was out in the forest on Saturday, the family were making alternative plans for what I'd be doing on the Sunday. So instead of returning to complete the dirt series with a 100km loop on Sunday, I was instructed to take the more mild option of a tootle on the Rail Trail with the kids. Frankly, I was a bit pooped on Saturday night and my forearms were tingly numb in a strange kind of way, so it didn't take too much convincing for me to go with the flow.
Gangnails and I, with our respective youngest kids on the back, headed out from Wangaratta aiming to meet the Farrier and
Rail Trail—about as flat as you can get
So, no full dirt series for me this year (unless I can whip out to Warburton tomorrow, which seems unlikely) but not a bad weekend on the bike.