** Day 1 Munda Biddi – Pickering Brook **
After a brief ride yesterday from Perth to Midland Junctionit was finally time to hit the trail!
The track begins with very dry forrest, red dirt and deep sand, it wastes no time in throwing you straight into tricky conditions! It was slow going. As a side effect of putting the bikes in boxes we also had lots of small mechanicals on the day. All combined we didn’t quite make the distance we wanted to our first planned hut and had to find an alternative. We looked for a campground or a hotel there was none to be found. The excellent Munda Biddi app showed water at Pickering Brook so that was our target. The water stop ended up being next to a school, plenty of flat grass for tents, an open toilet block, running water, a picnic table and an open power plug – awesome! We were a little concerned about camping right next to a school, but it was school holidays. The next morning the groundskeeper was there and was really friendly, it was no problem.
This was all good signs of things to come.
** Day 2 Munda Biddi – Wungong Hut **
Today was the second day on the ride proper, it was great to be actually on the trail. The landscape is really dry here, even though we are very close to Perth and not far from the ocean it feels more like far Western Queensland; even the soil is closer to red dirt than fertile QLD soil.I’m writing this in Wungong Hut, the huts are really a roof with platforms to sleep but they have toilets, tank water, wall to keep out bad weather and a dry roof, pretty good!
** Day 3 – Dandalup Hut **
The course today went through some just stunning heavily forested single track, particularly near Jarrahdale. It was a bit bumpy so it needed to watching for rocks but straightforward through the forest. Really fast, fun riding!
The theme for this ride seems to be hills and after the downhill forrest trails it was back to many rollers. The biggest was 400m with much of it around 16% and plenty loose gravel, it was hard.
We are beginning to meet other riders now, good to hear what was coming. Today we stopped at a superb Vietnamese bakery/Post Office/cafe in Jarrahdale and many other cyclists did too – it is well known. One of the people, Kevin, was a local trail angel. Kevin spends a lot of time riding out on his bike, cutting off branches, refilling toilet paper, talking to people and showing people short cuts around the worst of the pea gravel – he said this place had the worst on the whole route.
It soon became clear that Kevin was trying hard to avoid as much gravel as he could while chatting, not good for us as we were there for the gravel! Soon we parted after he had showed us roads around the bad climbs and even had some (previously) cold coke for reward. Coke zeros though, not sure the point 🙂
We road past the very impressive Dandalup North damn, it was huge. The best part though was a very clean toilet block with drinkable water and no people. It has been a few days of dusty trails with no real way to wash. A wash of clothes, and ourselves, in the sinks was very welcome!
Dandalup Hut is set on the side of a mountain looking West, a fantastic view watching the sun go down.
** Day 4 – Bidjar Nhoulin Hut **
We woke to rolling thunder, an ominous start of the day. Some gorgeous singletrack today, cooler too with lots of rain, ie. mud. The hills were better, only about 10% and pretty firm.
Lunch at Dwellingup was awesome – free hot showers! It also had a great general store with freeze dried food and real fruit. 2 hours later we left.
On the way is a truly massive tree, the King Jarra tree. These can be up to 400 years old and 40m high. Also on the path today we crossed over an extremely long Bauxite conveyer belt, it looked very Great Wall of China traversing the hills.
The hut is pretty similar to the rest of them but this one comes with baby scorpions; shoes are staying up off the ground and the tents are up inside the hut!
** Day 5 Yari Hut **
This was a hard day, we kept reading the pea gravel and sand should soon disappear – we’re still waiting. The distances we are travelling aren’t huge, around 80km, but always around 1000m climbing on loose gravel. In between is glorious single track through the forrest, bring on more of it.
This is the first day we saw mining, lots and lots of red dirt. We also met a few others doing the trail, one couple who have been doing it for weeks already, another couple have been on the road for years starting in Switzerland and still going. Her bike Suzie Q had a Rohloff hub so she was impressed with Stephen’s Rohloff with belt drive.
Today we are staying in Yari hut, quite different to the last Yari hut I saw climbing Yarigatake in Japan. The huts all have water tanks that are kept topped up by the trail association, great job people! Unfortunately something has happened to the tanks here a couple of days ago and the water was green and fizzy. Amazingly the WA government is providing free water bottles at the hut.
Dinner: Coq au Vin from the Outdoor Gourmet company
Rating: Tasted great, didn’t seem to agree with me though.
** Day 6 Collie **
A short day today, one of the guys was a bit under the weather and wanted a proper bed. We all wanted a hot shower and a washing machine, the smell wasn’t good! 🙂 Collie was quite a nice town to have an early stop in.
** Day 7 Donnybrook **
Today started at a balmy 7 degrees with freezing hands! Some pics of an old train lazy susan and then off to the ride. It began with some very steep, rocky, technical descents with a tight switchbacks. Until the bottom we reached a gorgeous river, perfect for a coffee. This ride has been extremely dry so far, lots of red dirt and only water in damns. It is a nice change to see a river.
After the river the scenery changed quite a bit, lush beef farmland. In particular, Fassifern Valley, was really pretty.
There was 1300m of climbing today on loose gravel, not the easiest ride.
