Digital Hippie

Trail Fairy

BressXpress

BressXpress is a ride through the scenic vineyards, orchards and single track bush trails at Bress Winery, Harcourt Victoria. It’s a great setting with Mt Alexander as the backdrop. and the course is well suited MTB riders of just about all skill levels.

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Arrows in the bush

Had another trail building session at the vineyard in Harcourt today with Peter from the Bike Vault. Lots of work still to be done but we both reckon the trail is shaping up well especially the section of bush single track which flows around the dams and includes a fun descent before heading off around the property. The vineyard guys have offered to slash and smooth other sections of trail using machines, which is great as it leaves a few weeks to clean up and ride the trail in before the event mid May.

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How civilized

Spent a few hours at a local vineyard/cidery putting in a MTB trail for an event that will run in the middle of next month, fingers crossed. There’s still a fair amount of work to do on the trail but dang, what a civilized setting for mountain biking. The Mojo HD was on hand to sample the grapes 😛

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Home Trail

There’s a fun section of trail that heads into the bush on the edge of town, makes for a good start and end to a ride, sort of like a home trail in a ski resort. It’s not a long section of trail by any means, just a nice little roller coaster trail that runs across several gullies before heading into the bush. I guess it takes 4-5 minutes to ride heading out where it’s mainly climbing, and 1-2 minutes the other way.

A bunch of trees fell across the trail in recent storms so for the last month or so it’s been out of action. I’ve missed it for sure and the alternative track is dull in comparison.

A local who lives in a property beside the trail has been chainsawing and removing the trees in the last couple of days, for firewood I guess, so I thought I’d head out and do a little track maintenance myself. It took an hour or so to rake the length of the trail, removing wheel and derailleur busting branches, debri from the fallen trees and trash that had been washed down the trail during the storms.

Home Trail wheelie

Home Trail wheelie

It felt kinda strange, like I was removing some of the character of the trail that had built up over time but no doubt it won’t look that way for long.

I couldn’t resist and headed out later in the day with the Mojo for a few test runs… fresh trail, SWEET!

It’s great to have the home trail back in action.

Phew… the world isn’t flat

What a flat, dry, treeless, hot and rocky um err.. landscape — who would want to live or ride there? That was my first impression of Central Victoria in the mid 90’s, the mission being to see where my partner grew up and meet her family. Funny really, as I now realize that any time you have that sort of reaction to a place chances are it means you’ll end up living there one day!

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