Gippsland Gold 230 Overnighter

Gippsland Gold 230 (Day 1)

Ok I mentioned that another ride was my first bike packing adventure, well this was my first flash packing adventure and I did it as part of a ride with The Curve Cycling crew who are a great bunch of people who make excellent bikes (especially bike packing bikes that I will one day own) and do excellent things in making bike touring and cycling accessible to everyone and anyone.

It was a large group that added to the excitement of the ride and the instructions were to meet behind the Yarragon shops for an 8am start.
I stayed at my mate Tony’s house the night before so we could get on the road nice and early. Up at the crack of dawn, we woofed down a coffee and a quick breakky, jumped in the car looking forward to getting the road. A flat battery of course stunted our progress but not our enthusiasm and a short wait for the RACV later, we were ready to rock and roll.

As aforementioned the ride starts out of a cute little town called Yarragon and quickly starts racking up the vert. Don’t get too comfortable on the bitumen because the road quickly turns into some smooth gravel which darts in and out over the rolling hills of the Gippsland country side.
Once over the Strzelecki Highway, we hit some pine plantations and rougher roads with one overly confident descent sending me over the handle bars and into a vast patch of mud. Exactly what you want when riding with an entirely new group of people for the first time. Luckily only the one fellow rider saw my act of superman although there was no hiding the evidence when we stopped for lunch in Boolara.
Fortunately the Boolara general store stocked some medical supplies that I was able to utilise and one of my fellow riders “Damo” was able to put my handlebars back where they were meant to be. (I was pretty grateful for this as it would have been pretty tough to ride my bike for the next 150km at a 45 degree angle).

With a belly full of kebab and a corked thigh we trudged back in to the wilderness. We cruised on bitumen for the next 20km or so before embarking on a 8 or 9km roughish gravel ascent before descending into the town of Foster for the night.

Curve had organised a great dorm at Prom Central Caravan Park in Foster and dinner at the Foster exchange hotel where Tony and I exchanged what was probably a few too many pints when you have 120km of gravel to ride the next day.

Gippsland Gold 230 (Day 2)

Despite the alcohol consumed the previous evening, I woke up early and ready to tackle the day. An attempt to jump out of bed was made with a jolt of pain emanating from my corked thigh defeating that attempt. This was going to be a long day.

I gingerly dressed myself and set out to find a hot cup of coffee believing that if I warmed my legs up, the corked thigh would follow. Honestly, it helped. There was no coffee to be found however, it seemed that anything that wasn’t a service station doesn’t open on Sundays in Foster so an unsurprisingly bitter servo coffee it was. It tasted like not even an attempt had been made to clean the coffee machine for many months.

Rob made me some porridge (the guy that witnessed my superman efforts) and then laughed at my feeble attempts to throw my injured leg over my bike saddle.

We were off! Most of the group were spritely and rightly so considering they had decided to take it easy the night before. Tony and I grimaced at the back of the group.

A climb, immediately, how good. This was to be the theme of the day as even though day 2 has less km’s and slightly less vert, the climbs felt longer.
Again we weaved through the beautiful country side, the weather had delivered also. The group had splintered and I found myself riding alone until lunch which I didn’t mind too much.

The Grand Ridge Brewery in Mirboo North was to be our destination for lunch, I declined another pint but I did welcome any greasy food that was to come my way.
Mirboo North is a fantastic spot to stop and take it all in. Plenty of eateries, cafes, parks etc.

It was pretty much 20km uphill after lunch (I’m glad I turned down that beer) and then a beautiful, scenic and sweeping descent back into Yarragon where we just made last biscuits at the bakery and said our goodbyes.

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