Sunday, January 03, 2010

New Year's bike tour

For New Year's, my buddy Simon and his girlfriend invited me to come on a three day bike ride from Wangaratta to Bright and back.

Ordinarily, 80km in a day would be a walk in the park. Trivial, even. However, add 40 degree heat, mountain bikes, and a 40kg bike trailer and it turns out it's harder than it appears on paper. But we didn't have too hard a time.

Bright was positively jumping on New Year's Eve. We also happened to be in the wettest part of Victoria: 50mm overnight (i.e. deluge). 11pm-12:30am consisted of listening to a band play in the second storey balcony of the pub across the city square, from under our own balcony, and watching kids dance and roll around in the rain in the square.

New Year's Day was pretty easy...ride 60km to Milwa, mostly downhill, stopping for lunch and two wineries for tastings. The following day was even easier: ride 50 metres to the mustard shop for tastings, another 50 metres to the olive shop (fresh olives! Mmm!), 400 metres to the Brown Brothers winery for a comprehensive round of wine tasting, 2.5 km to the cheese factory (yes, more tastings) and finally 18km to Wangaratta.

Feathertop Winery


Mmmmm....cheeeese!


Doing nothing to dispel myths about Australia and spiders...I guess it was drier in the tent

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