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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