I headed out in the middle of the day along the Great Dividing Trail looking for a flowy stretch of trail shown in one of the Rocky Rider videos on Youtube.

Starting at Etty St in town then up into the bush along Poverty Gully and out towards Spring Gully, it wasn’t long before I came across the section of trail I was looking for — where the GDT passes through the old Spring Gully mines, nice. Turns out I’d ridden here before, on my 29″  mountain unicycle back in September 2008, but didn’t recognize it in the video (probably because I was shagged out of my head by the time I rode through there on the uni).

Apart from a light early breakfast I hadn’t had much else to eat before heading out on the ride and the temperature was warming up too, but I decided that I might as well continue on to Fryerstown and Vaughan Springs before turning back. It’s an interesting ride with lots of variety along the way, and Vaughan Springs is an oasis along the route with a good swimming hole, green grass, picnic areas and a giant slide. Cool.

Heading back through Fryerstown my Camelbak was running on empty. My legs were feeling pretty good but the light breakfast had caught up with me by early afternoon. Without any water and not much fuel in the energy tank I had to take it easy all the way back to Castlemaine, before pigging out at the Crusty Pie Bakery.