Corryong to Bright
The day began with three magpies swooping me in what seemed a well-practised joint manoeuvre as I headed for the bakery to by pasties for early lunch. The bakery folk warned me of another magpie waiting at the other end of the main street. I must have met fifty or sixty by the end of the day! The plan for the day was to ride the Murray Valley Highway to Shelley (an old railway station,) and then follow the High Country Rail Trail across the Lake Hume bridges before turning to ride back to Bright during the evening. My plan was to arrive in Tangambalanga around 1pm to buy something for a second lunch. I arrived just after 5, and didn't even bother to see if the little general store was still open.
The slow day was mostly caused by the rail trail. Victoria has lots of minor country roads which have just one lane's width of bitumen. I quipped to a couple I met on the rail trail that in South Australia we call those roads bike paths. "And this," I said, "we would call a fire track."
The surface was quite rideable, but only at low speed due to sticks, stones, ruts... and snakes. There was only the one snake, and fortunately my instinctive swerve around it happened to be at the back end! But every long string of bark and a good number of the sticks in the dappled sunlight after that had me thinking snake... The couple I met were riding eBikes with what looked like 45 mm tyres, and that meant they were able to travel much more quickly than a laden touring bike.
The trail eventually crosses the Murray Valley Highway, which gave me the opportunity to choose a quicker route. But since I had adequate food to get home, I chose the quiet route. It has a number of old bridges, most of which require a detour because they are unsafe.
The corridor is multi use, allowing access for landowners, Electranet and Telstra workers, and others. There are multiple gates. Some have grids, most don't. Over time, the surface improves markedly but the multipurpose nature of the trail remains.
There are also quite a few obscure transfers across roads and around creeks which can leave a rider wondering if they are still on course. Usually, you find one of the trail's painted bikes, which are a reassurance of being on course.
The trail crosses two arms of Lake Hume. The first crossing is parallel to the road, and is followed later by the old rail bridge.
The lake views are stunning.
After the bridge, I cut across to Tangambalanga which set me on course to Bright. There are two roads up the Kiewa Valley towards Mt. Beauty. One is the Kiewa Valley Highway (C531) which I expected to have a fair amount of traffic for the start of school holidays. Parallel, on the other side of the Kiewa River, is Gundowring Road, which doesn't even rate a highway number. Still sealed, the traffic here was very light, and by the time it finally joined the main highway, most traffic had stopped anyway. It's about 60km of slow altitude gain all the way to the Tawonga Gap turnoff to Bright, with a few sharp pinches in the climbs.
Tawonga Gap itself is more serious; 7.5km with an average of 6.9%. That left the last 20km to Bright, which is all downhill. This was the longest day of the three: 191km over 17:26 hours.
What about lights?
My bike has a hub dynamo which gives a certain freedom from battery issues. But it's not really bright enough for long night rides in kangaroo and wombat country—not to mention sheep and pedestrians. I have added a Cateye Volt 1700 headlight, which I leave on daylight flash and then turn to the low setting at night. This gives me easily 24 hours service, with enough storage to turn the light to high for faster descents. On the rear of the bike I have a Niteflux Redzone 8, (New more powerful versions here) courtesy of Adelaide's own Dave Bastien, which gives me 24 hours on low flash. I have a spare mounted to the back of my helmet for those times I need a bit more output. I use this if I need to be on a busy section of road. Dave's lights have very bright daylight settings, although you get less time, of course.
My headlight is lighting up the cattle warning in the distance.
