Wednesday, May 02, 2018

Wednesday Night Ashley Forest Exploration

Met Nelson in Rangoon and we met the locals at 6.30, making a posse of 7 all told - mostly older guys, one on an electric.  We managed (with very little wheedling) to convince them to ride in the hills - as opposed to the river tracks.

Headed north over the Ashley Bridge, then a right onto the (eastern) Loburn road along here (Carrs Rd), right into Mowatts Rd, then left onto Boundary, mostly climbing all the way. Up this to a gate we jumped onto Forestry Rd (Purple Heights?) which took us up to Mt Grey Rd at the "2km" mark.  From here it was over to a cool wee section of singletrack, with a few nice whoopdedoos, finishing down on another cross road, then short ways back to Mt Grey Rd (lower down than the 2km mark), and along a little way to where singletrack-city started.  Started off into a section that had trees across the trail (thinning), so turned back and dropped into a fun section that meandered for a ways, sense of direction completely blown.  This section finished and we were off down into another section, with roots galore, nicely made trails all in forest.  finally down this long blasty section and we were at the corner of Thomson, Barron and Laurence where a locked gate sits.  Electro man was supposed to be here, so we rode back up Thomsons and met him coming down.  We continued up and took a side track that had several singletrack diversions until it met the last trail we'd just come down, down this again, shorter and faster than first time round.

Now it was onto Barron, down this, crossing Forestry onto Gories, to Boundary, down to Downs (with a bike bridge across a creek) across to Marshmans, spinning like crazy down this to Ashley Township.  Down High St to the river and along the river singletracks back to the main Loburn Rd bridge, and zoomed back into town.  Lots of fast (me absolutely maxed out in my low top gear) spinning, spinny puffy puff puff spin spin pufffffed.

All over, 25 kms with 276m altitude, maybe 15% singletrack, and roads 45 % sealed, 40% gravel.

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