Cycle WA

So... we were over in WA (Perth->Augusta->Margaret River->Perth) over the holidays. As you might expect, the trip involved a lot of eating and drinking and generally not really getting much exercise. Thought a quick note about the few hours we got to do something vaguely energetic was worthwhile though.

Whilst staying in Margaret River, we managed to hire a couple of bikes. A (somewhat small - 19") Giant Boulder for myself and some sort of lowly GT model (think it was an Aggressor) for Pratiwi - for only 15 bucks a day each seemed pretty reasonable and allowed a ride on the Margaret River to Cowaramup trail. Actually - there are two hire places here, one is based at the Gulf servo smack in the middle of the town, and the other is the local cycle shop which we thought would be a better go and was where these came from.

Anyhow - this trail is part of the Rails to Trails program which seems to be going well (I spoke to a guy out near Oberon, NSW about this last year and note they now appear on the Railtrails site. As you might expect from a disused rail corridor, there's pretty much zero gradient here and the path is well defined and has a good surface. A few rickety looking bridges add some contrast and the trail did narrow here and there. Actually, one of the bridges was out which meant a welcome detour via the Chimney Trail - a nice walking track that could almost be classed as sniggle.

Luckily, on the return trip we went looking for a path into town and got lost, finding ourselves on some more nice single track before ending up in almost the right place. You'd hope there was some other cool stuff in the area too - a handful of serious looking bikes were spied in town - but didn't get the chance to find out.

Anyhow - there you go - MR is not all about wine and cheese and food (although this is good of course - the fare at Relish The Experience Restaurant was seriously the best I'd tasted in a long time) so bear in mind a leisurely ride whenever you get over there.