Other Indexes
Cycling, walking, touring, skiing etc
Contents in chronological order.
Bicycle Trails
This year my choice was to do a cycling adventure in New Zealand. I read with
interest about the new “great cycle rides” in New Zealand; complementary to
the “great walks” and learned that the Alps to Ocean ride is almost complete.
Looking on the map it looks like I could do almost a loop with the Otago rail
trail and the Alps to Ocean combined.
Just after 7:30am I headed for Leongatha to the trail head of the Great
Southern Rail Trail. This trail runs continuously for a distance of 74 km from
Leongatha to Port Welshpool.
Somehow I convinced Caroline that riding a bicycle will be fun, and look how
tantalising the pictures are in the brochures and website for the Hauraki rail
trail.
Truly a world class off road long distance bike ride. Put it on your bucket
list, perhaps the top of it.
Wonderful farm valleys and mountain scenery. Not a cliche as it's true:
sublime.
Today was one of the highlights of my trip. It was a great combination of fun
with continuous down hill mountain bike riding and seeing some of the famous
ruins in the Ollantaytambo and Sacred Valley areas.
Mountain Biking
The Wombat state forest is laced with trails. It is non technical and rather
fun to explore. We started at the Bullengarook Reserve entrance. It is the
second ride I did in this area on a few weeks ago.
Road Cycling
This ride started at Devonport and ended in Hobart travelling via the west
coast. I really enjoyed this ride. It is very beautiful, relatively safe being
almost devoid of cars.
I learnt about this multi day bike ride that takes you from Bairnsdale back to
Melbourne and thought why not ? What a great adventure it proved to be.
There was much hype with Cadel Evans and Lance Armstrong and a number of other
top names attending, so I had to go !
There is a bike charity bike that has been attended to by friends in my
cycling club known as the Bayside Bandidos (nothing to do with that notorious
motor equivalent, we're just a bunch of mid-life crisis bikies with legs for
motors wearing lycra). This event was often talked about and caused a frenzy
of excitement in the early part of each year - I had to go.