Great Single Track Muni Day Ride (Victoria, Australia)
 

I had a great muni day ride this week on a 35km section of the 'Great
Dividing Trail', which is a walking trail that runs ~280km from Bacchus
Marsh - Blackwood - Daylesford - (Ballarat branch) - Castlemaine -
Bendigo (Victoria, Australia). The bulk of the track is through forest.
LOTS of great off road riding to be had, 1/2 day rides, full day rides,
also well suited to unsupported multi day muni adventures hopping from
town to town.

The section I rode was from Mt Franklin to Castlemaine, virtually all
through forest with ~25km of single track out of the 35km, ranging from
fast and flowing to technical drops through steep gullies, obstacles,
climbs etc - overall _awesome_ uni terrain.

I took the 29" initially set at 125, then swapped to the 150 holes for
the bulk of the ride, back to 125's towards the end.

The only water along the section I rode is the excellent swimming hole
at Vaughan Springs, which is conveniently half way more or less - great
place to stop for lunch (or break the route into two separate rides),
lots of technical riding around the springs too.

The Great Dividing Trail is intended to be a walking track
http://gdt.org.au/, though it looks like it will be officially open to
bikes etc in the future - it's unofficially ok to ride on it now afaik.
I hope to have ridden the entire 280km of trail before summer kicks in.

All of the sections of trail I've ridden so far are clearly marked, but
there are also printed maps available. Here's the section I rode:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/975214

Sorry to ramble, but I was really surprised by how great this section
of track was - so much singletrack, lots of forest and not a person to
be seen. I'll be checking it out again soon.


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Great Single Track Muni Day Ride (Victoria, Australia)
 

Looks like a ton of fun!


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Great Single Track Muni Day Ride (Victoria, Australia)
 

Totally awesome... something to dream about for the future!


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Great Single Track Muni Day Ride (Victoria, Australia)
 

Hey, nice.

I did that last year from Daylesford. The springs were super handy too,
when I ran out of water. Was a lovely ride. The first bit out of
Daylesford is mental, very hard. Has no bike signs in parts though.

Have you talked to the guys in Castlemaine cycles, they had some other
nice riding round there too.

Joe


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Great Single Track Muni Day Ride (Victoria, Australia)
 

hey cool Joe!

We live about 10 mins from Daylesford on the edge of the Wombat Forest
which is great for off road uni rides. I don't ride around Castlemaine
much as the forest here is outside the front door vs a drive to
Castlemaine, plus it's cooler (temperature-wise) here, greener, more
water and hills, and generally less pillaged by gold mining, more
logging though.

The Daylesford-Hepburn-Mt Franklin section is neat, 24" country for me,
best avoided on weekends due to bush walkers visiting the mineral
springs. I'm fairly sure that stretch of land is managed by a different
government body, officially 'no bikes' but is a fairly popular ride for
locals.

The GDT organization seem fairly sympathetic (or at least realistic) re
bike use of the trail overall:
http://gdt.org.au/GDTA/Track_Development
and are holding a meeting this month in Daylesford re use and promotion
of the GDT for MTB etc. I'm planning on going to fly the muni flag :)

If the weather holds up this week I'm hoping to ride the
Daylesford-Blackwood section. I've criss-crossed parts of it on other
rides, should be awesome!

I meant to say in my first post - if anyone is interested in a ride
around these parts and would like some local info to help plan it, or
someone to ride with etc, drop me a line. Always up for some uni
adventure!

ps. I've added a couple more pics of the Mt Franklin-Castlemaine trail.
I didn't take many unfortunately as I started the ride in the afternoon,
was a bit of a squeeze time-wise, got into Castlemaine just on dark -
DOH! :p


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