Posted by Not that I’m getting hung up on this or anything, but the thought has occurred to me that when I carefully selected a few rides to go on earlier this week … namely Lake Spicer and Henty Dunes … I found myself pushing my bike for kilometre after kilometre through deep rivers and soft sand.
Yesterday and today I followed routes provided by other people … and spent the whole two days actually riding my bike and really enjoying myself …
… I’m sure that’s just coincidence … right?
Today’s ride was actually meant to happen next weekend when I had planned to head up and join the Launceston Mountain Bike Club’s social ride around the Dazzler Ranges up near Bakers Beach (in Narawntapu National Park) … but for various reasons I couldn’t organise things that weekend.
But then Kim and I realised that we could both go up there this weekend and spend some romantic bonding time together on the sunny beaches of Narawntapu National Park.
Well, sort of … to be slightly more accurate, Kim planned on heading off for a 25-30km training run while I planned on going for a ride. So we started from the same place (and that’s romantic) it’s just that she headed off to run part of the Convicts and Wenches course to get her 25km run in …
… and I went off in the opposite direction to scout out one of the mountain bike routes that Damo from LMBC had very kindly sent me earlier in the week.
Nothing like a romantic weekend away together … apart.
I headed back inland along the road we’d come in on, and then out along Browns Creek Road which was a surprisingly nice way to warm up the legs …
About 14kms from the car I diverted off onto the Dazzler Fire Trail (unsigned) and then had a glorious time returning to the car via a network of very ridable fire trails …
All up the loop was about 28kms, and took just over 2 hours leaving me enough time to head out onto the beach and cycle out to meet Kim on her way back from her run …
We passed each other about two-thirds the way down the beach, and I said I’d just carry on down to the end and then catch back up to her on the way back (I was after all on my bike and she had already run 20kms by that stage) …
Suffice to say I got to the end of the beach … but I never saw Kim again until I got back near the car where I found her sunbaking on the beach, having already had a soak in the ocean …
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| Kim, kim where art though Kim? |
Narawantapu National park and the surrounding trails and reserves, really are a gem of a place to explore, though I’ve still to check in with the local rangers and actually see how much of the fire trail network they’re happy for cyclists to go and explore as my experience is that signs like this could mean that the answers not much …
But there are alternatives which don’t go through the park, so watch this space … they may be happy for mountain bikers to use these trails which means more tracks to add to tassie trails in the future.