Bit cool overnight here. Temperature was 6 degrees when we got up but the camper was in the shade and a breeze was blowing through the park making it quite hard to stay warm. As promised yesterday (if you read further) only MTB and no shopping talk in todays blog. We got kitted up and headed off to the mountain bike park off Alma road a few KM ride from here. The park has an excellent map at the trail head and you basically do one of several loops. The green loop was a bit of fun to get warmed up on and I did it a few times as even after the ride to the park I was not properly warmed up after the cold start.

Signage at the trail head

Hard to get lost here, follow the yellow or green arrows

We hit the main XC trail next a 10KM loop around the compact area that is the MTB park. They have really crammed the track in here and you are constantly passing sections you have just ridden only a meter or so away. One concern for me was the number of junctions where you crossed the tracks. There were many junctions on this loop a necessity of the compact track. I would not like to be here on a busy day with everybody chasing Strava segments, it could all end in tears.

The XC loop I expected to be a little disappointing but it turned out to be a 40 minute loop with just about everything. I would describe the XC loop like this – wide, narrow, fast, slow, technical, flowing, rocky, smooth, sandy, gravelly, flat, up and down. A 40 minute lap had me puffing at the end due to all the climbing being at the end of the lap. I did come off in front of Sharon looking at her on the track above me and my wide handle bars caught a sapling that brought me down as well. I enjoyed the track and had fun. Sharon found it too technical for her liking and struggled a bit on some the XC loop sections.

There was also a jumps decent that was a bit of fun with a few big jumps with some fast berms at the end that we both had a run through. I didn’t bother doing the downhill track down the centre of the park, not my type of fun. After all that we headed out on a link trail back up behind the gold course. The link trail passed a big canyon with a creek flowing into it. There was a lot of sharp elevation change coming out of here. Eventually we got back on the tarmac and headed back for lunch.

Turn off to local winery on the rail trail

Very welcoming

Nice training ride to Wangaratta

Track merge point

Typical track start off the rail trail

After lunch we hit the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail that took us down to Beechworths iconic Flame Trees Trail. The rail trail is sealed and you can ride 100’s of KM to many of the surrounding towns on it. One section has the Flame Trees MTB Trail coming off it. I had very low expectations of this green rated track but some of it was a lot of fun and definitely a blue standard tinge in places. The section on the northern side of the rail trail was a great bit of flowy single track and it was worth the effort to ride down here to do it. Some of the more mickey mouse sections had realy long grass hanging over the track making it impossible to see where it went next. All good things must come to an end and we road back to Beechworth with a stop at the bakery for another crap coffee but nice pastries on the way back to the camper after a good few miles in the legs and calories used.

No idea what tomorrow will bring but Mt Buller is only a couple of days away now so some tappering might be in order so we have fresh legs for 5 days of full on MTB action.