Perfect end to a perfect weekend

It was a great weekend all up. I went skating on Saturday morning and bumped into a few old friends out there, which lead to an improptu slides session. Bike fettling on Saturday afternoon, great riding on Sunday morning and then dozing in front of motorsports with a good homebrewed beer on Sunday afternoon as I recuperated from my early morning.  Then on Sunday night I was able to speak to my parents and my grandad over Skype before tucking into a beautiful spicey fish dish.

 Needless to say I slept very well on Sunday night.

Mt Joyce

Sunday morning saw me rising bright & early to head out to Mt Joyce. A little too bright & early in fact - this isn't a sight I see very often

 Mt Joyce is about an hours drive away, heading inland, and as the sun rose the views were of classic Australian farming land

But the desire to get out and enjoy it was held at bay by the outside temperatures - before this I didn't even know the temperature guage had a negative sign!

By the time we reached the carpark it had warmed up to 2 or 3 degrees. We rugged up and headed out on the ride, which started off down a tarmac road that ran below the dam and was freezing cold but then climbed up the ridge to the high point here. We soon warmed up.

You can see the lake in the middle-distance, with the car park next to it 

Enough sight-seeing. The trails have been built over the last 6 months and are designed to attract mountain bikers from Brisbane and other high density populations out into struggling rural areas. I hope it works - as it was the carpark was about a third full of mountain bikers when we got there at 7.30am, and full of picnicing families and dirty sweaty mountain bikers when we left.

The trails themselves have been built with an eye to the flow, that mystical feeling where the bike rides itself and you're just hanging on for the ride.

 There are a few drop-offs, plenty of bermed corners and even the odd table-top

 and even the odd wall ride

 It's not all about the gnarl though. The climb to the top is a bugger but once you're up there it's easy to find your way back down again whilst keeping all your wheels on the ground if you're as timid as me. The only problem is that once you're at the bottom you want to do it all again, and the adrenalin only wears off once you've committed yourself to the upward slog.

There's also downhill tracks and, on the other side of the spectrum, some lovely looking lakeside meanders. I can see this place being a popular weekend spot!

I 'ardly know 'er!

When I was a kid we went to North Wales for holidays. To get to the coast we used to drive through a town called Bangor (pronounced 'bang-er')

Whenever we saw it on a sign Dad would call out "Bangor? I 'ardly know 'er!". I had no idea what he was talking about but it was funny anyway.

Fast-forward 20 years and I was living with a housefull of climbers in Manchester. We'd head out to N Wales fairly regularly to go climbing in the wilds of Snowdonia, the coastal caves at Llandudno, the slabs at Tremadog or the death-on-a-stick seacliffs of Gogarth. All destinations that were reached via Bangor, and my dads joke never got old. To me at least, and as I was driving I was given some leeway by the others.

Why am I mentioning this? A new mountain bike park opened about an hour away in the Gold Coast hinterlands, and it's getting excellent reviews.
We're planning to go down early on Sunday morning for a ride, and then I might treat myself to a dip in the ocean on the way home.

So what am I up to this weekend? I'm off to Mount Joyce.

Roadie roadie suck dead toadie

I've been busy in the garage building up a new bike, mainly from bits & pieces bought from or donated by mates. I reckon I have procured bits from around a dozen people to build this up, and the only things bought new were cables, outers and bartape. The frame itself looks a bit dog-eared but is a lovely lugged-steel Abeni, made by a Sydney builder in (probably) the early 80's. I need to take some lug-porn shots for the traditionalists, although they are probably recoiling in horror at the thought of non-period componentry bolted to a classic frame.

It may look familiar. It was initially built up as a singlespeed roadie, my entrance into the skinny-wheeled world

Then it inherited some fetching pink wheels & a sense of style to become my pub fixie

Occasionally suffering the indignaties of fasion when I felt like playing 'dress-up'

Now it's back the way that nature intended and, once I get the positioning finalised, should allow me to cover some distance and explore the local highways & byways a bit more.

Until I decide to rebuild it again that is.

Steam engines!

We were staying in a motel opposite Queens Park in Toowoomba. As we walked through one day I noticed a steam engine parked up in a local sandpit. Apparently this used to be pretty common - old steam engines were cleaned up, painted in bright colours and used to amuse children. It still works today

 The park was also the source of much reminiscence because of this....

Spot the excitement? Trees that shed their leaves. Brisbane is so tropical that the trees don't shed their leaves and so the seasons pass unnoticed. Seeing a nearly bare tree clothed in only a few auburn leaves makes you think fondly of the old country. Although that blue sky again gives the game away.

Toowoomba has an escarpment called 'Picnic Point', which has one of the biggest flags I've ever seen to remind me that I'm not in England any more (Toto)

along with a magical view over the hills beyond

You can just about see the road that climbs 700' up into Toowoomba in the middle of the picture below

 

On the way home we drove through some of the areas that were devestated by the floods earlier this year. The entire region was completely flat and huge - very scary to think that somehow this entire area was under water..

Frozen fingers

Sunday morning dawned beautifully clear in Toowoomba, which also meant is was abosulutely freezing. I saw somebody scraping ice of the windscreen of their car - the first time I've seen that since moving to Australia in 2005. When we mustered for the ride at 8am it was just under 2 degrees...

Maybe fingerless gloves weren't the best option

We left Toowoomba in a pack of about 200 riders, and not long after leaving the city limits we found the fog

 

It was a bit unsettling descending down unknown, potholed roads without being able to see what was at the bottom. But that also helped in the hillclimbs - you only realised how big they were when you got to the top

It was very atmospheric out there, and a little bit frightening once the rides split and the 'social' riders were on our own with seemingly no support car

but the views of the rolling hills were worth it

Eventually the sun started to show its face and our fingers started to thaw out

 

and for one spooky minute I thought I'd been transported back to the mining villages of the north of England - albeit with a sky so blue that the locals would run for cover

After the ride we warmed up and then wandered over to watch the bike racing being run under the Tour De Toowoomba banner. We were lucky enough to have a friend racing in the A-grade criterion race, which gave us someone to cheer 

An hour plus 3 laps of aerobically maxed out racing - crazy loons. Attack!

Toowoomba

We've escaped from Brisbane and are up in the hills of the Darling Downs in a town called Toowoomba for the weekend. It's a beautiful couple of hours to drive out here through wide open farmland under the dome of a blue blue sky - it makes you feel like you're living in a snow dome. And just before you reach Toowoomba itself the road turns skywards and you grind up 700 vertical metres before popping out in what seems like the town centre.

The town is in the middle of prime farming areas and the architecture reflects that heritage of civic cash









Although the street layout is that of a classic Aussie country town - a grid network of wide streets stretching off to the horizon with central parking



We're not here to sightsee though, we're here to ride. There's a ' tour de toowoomba' bike race along with an accompanying charity ride, and we're here to make sure the intensity of the charity ride is kept high. Our motel is right next to the criterion course, which means it's slowly filling up with lean, shaved-legged cyclist types. Hope they don't keep us awake with their wild roadie partying tonight.