Airlie beach bike hire

Don't you mean fatbike? airlie beach...??

My brother lives up there and I took my old 26” Specialized Epic MTB up over Christmas/New Year and did a fair bit of riding in the area. I mainly rode the Whitsunday Great Walk, riding from his place at Cannon Valley down the highway, then up Brandy Creek Rd and Forestry Rd. It’s about 7km from the highway, mainly dirt road and good steady climb all the way up Brandy and Forestry Rd’s to the Great Walk trail head which is at the end of the road. A good warm up . Then from memory it’s about 8km down the Great Walk to Repulse Creek camp site and you can do a side trail on your left called Wompoo on the way down. It’s a more technical single trail about 1.8km return back to the main trail and well worth it. We even did a night ride from the trail head down to Repulse Creek camp site, that alone is about 16km return, awesome night sounds, but heaps of cane toads on the trail as you’d expect. Plenty of toad strikes that night! It’s steady downhill most the way from the trail head, then obviously uphill all the way back out. This would be good training for the Mont no doubt. We also did the full length of the Great Walk but we started at the Airlie Beach end. Well worth it. The first few kays are monster up-hill (we did a fair bit of walking) but then followed by miles of awesome flowing and technical steep downhill single track that really gets the brakes cooking. You'll eventually go through Repulse Creek camp site again and end up back at the Forestry Rd/Brandy Creek Rd trail head again. It’s 30+ kms and you'll want a car waiting at the Brandy Creek end. We did it in the heat of summer, you'll love it this time of year and take the time to stop at some of the look outs over Airlie and Shute Harbour along the way. Just stunning. Take heaps of fluids and some food and be aware there is no mobile reception along most of this ride. This is a stunning ride and I highly recommend it.

So my advise is forget the roadie and go the MTB. There is a decent bike shop at the Cannonvale Shopping Centre just outside of Airlie but I don’t know if they hire bikes, they may be able to help with a loaner or something. I think the owners name is Chris. She’s been instrumental in starting the MTB club/community up there. Check out http://whitsundaymtbc.com.au/ for all the info on trails/rides etc and they may be able to assist with getting in touch with Chris and/or the bike shop. I just cant remember the name of the shop at the moment. Enjoy it, I'm very jealous and cant wait to do it again myself!