Ride Castlemaine

Had a fun time on Ken’s Loop (or Ken’s Track) this week. It flows well and has a bit of everything — rocks, smooths, ups, downs, fasts, slows — and is in great condition ATM.

Been feeling like Johnny Cash lately, not because of the many times my dad played his records as a kid, but because the riding stuff I’ve been wearing over and over and over is black… ok not exactly, but pretty dark overall.

Warm, sunny Spring morning. I was itching to get out and make the most of a couple of spare hours after work, so I headed over to Poverty Gully as I hadn’t been over that way for a while. It’s good fun with some scrabbly rock sections, lots of cruisey single track, a few short climbs, as well as being a handy way to get onto the Goldfields Track/Great Dividing Trail. Lots of wildflowers out over that way too.

Scraping the ice off the car windscreen in the morning, scrubbing the pool clean in the afternoon – it’s gotta be Spring in Victoria!

After the drought ending rain earlier in the year the woods are jam packed with an amazing display of wildflowers this Spring. On a fine Saturday afternoon bizarrely you don’t come across anyone else out on the trails. It makes for great riding in a selfish kind of way but the lack of people out there enjoying the bush verges on a wrong you want to right. With a fuel reduction burn scheduled over Summer chances are it could be many years before the woods will look like this again.

Here’s the funny thing about turns in the trail – they curve instead of going straight, go figure!