Quite warm here again so we hit the trails in the morning to miss the hottest part of the day. My Garmin was sitting on 18 degrees for the early part of the ride. Sharon again had high expectations of the tracks here but in the end she was just happy to have ridden them once.

Start of the Fireshed trail. Apparently it’s on private property so they don’t publish a map – it’s nailed to the tree though.

The fireshed is just next to this landmark they told us to aim for – easy to find

Ready to go on the Fireshed Trail

Talking over tea about what section we may ride again in the morning having now ridden it all there was nothing that really stood out with that ‘wow factor’ that we must go back. There are certainly some fun sections like JJ’s over on the Fireshed trail or the start of Hatti Gaddi with all it’s jumps or maybe the super technical and super gnarly in parts ‘No Second Thoughts’. ‘Evil Tom’ was a lung buster climb and ‘The Bridges’ had about 10 of these yellow bridges that you dropped down onto and then up the other side, it was a bit of fun. ‘Fireline’ and ‘TNT’ were pretty fast and flowing on a sandy gravely base like most of the tracks around here except for ‘Bad Apple’, ‘No Second Thoughts’ and parts of ‘The Bridges’ that had a rocky base with a bit of loose stuff to keep you honest as well as some sticking up sharp rock edges to cut a side wall or two.

The second ramp was really difficult to get tipped and you were quite a way off the ground balancing up their

Start of JJ’s -Sharon liked this bit

I rode with Sharon in the morning and found I had a loose back wheel on the way back. The bearing cups had come loose again from my obviously crap repair job yesterday. Pulled everything fully apart this time and then found I had not packed any grease. Went over to the bike shop to buy some but they had none and the mechanic was out riding so she offered the mechanics tube if I bought my wheel over and did it myself, which I did. I purchased some new grips while I was there with some soft covering to cushion my hands a bit. So for good advice and friendly service drop in at Tathra Beach & Bike.

These were at most junctions and unlike some other trail maps we have encountered they all had “you are here” on them

The also host a series of maps of the trails on there website and have a very handy trail map to take with you but as we found everything is so well sign posted we did not really need it except to find the black diamond tracks as they are not sign posted in all cases, they are shown on the maps though. Bundadung North, Bundadung South, Bundadung Map, Fire Shed Map.

More rear bearing issues

After fixing my bike I went to do all the black diamond trails and hill climbs we missed this morning and Sharon went to look through the local shops around town. Now with my new grips came these fancy bar ends that seemed to have made my bars even wider as I kept clipping trees with the ends. Managed to stay out of trouble till the last 1/2 hour where I clipped a tree next to a drop and went over the handle bars but luckily landed in some Sheoak needles but still cut up the front of my calves a bit. Right near the end on the ‘Corkscrew’ the left side bar hit one of those springy saplings and I had a rather high speed crash into the track. My shoulder and head (helmet) took most of the impact but I got up again (expletive expletive expletive) and rode back so all is well for now.

They are lying – must have been for a recent event that was on here

Some interesting trail names

Start of Kingy’s Climb

These signs were totally unexpected and really distracting

These signs were totally unexpected and really distracting

Junction of Kingy’s Climb and No Second Thoughts. The gnome was the only marker. Gnomes were everywhere along the trails.

As I sit here there is lightning all around us putting on a great show with the pretty ordinary weather expected to hit overnight. Not sure what we will do for the next couple of days as it’s going to be very wet everywhere around here. The helpful staff at the bike shop did give us a few other ideas of places to visit to MTB on the way from Canberra to Bulla so a bit of internet research might be the order of the day.