The Oaks - 29th April 2007

Mick and I decided to do the Oaks again this Sunday. We met at Central Station at 8 and got the train 1.5 hours outside of Sydney to Woodford.

The ride went well, I love the 5km or so downhill section, we gunned it and had an awesome time. Managed to make it back to Glenbrook in about 2 hours.

All went well until we were on the home staight and Mick lost a pedal! We tried unsuccessfully to reattach it and Mick then had to push the bike up the hill back to Glenbrook! After a quick bite to eat we caught the train back to Sydney and civilisation.

The Oaks - 22/4/7

On Sunday 22nd April, Sean picked me up at the ungodly hour of 7am. We headed an hour west of Sydney to Glenbrook to catch a train to Woodford, there we picked up Kev and his mate Scott and headed off to the Oaks trail.

The first 5 minutes for me were a little scary, it is open firetrial and some bits are quite eroded making the terrain quite uneven, took me a few minutes to get used to it and figuring out the best way of tackling certain sections. After about 10km the track smoothed out a lot and we reached a long steady downhill section, which was awesome! After that, it was in to the bush, the last 10km is through bushes, which was also a little scary to begin with but I soon got the hang of it!

All too quickly it was over and we found ourselves back on tarmac and facing a massive climb back to the car at Glenbrook. After a quick sausage roll and coffee we headed back to Sydney.

I absolutely loved this track, so much so that I’m dragging Mick there early this coming Sunday 27th April.

The Narrowneck Trail - Saturday 7th April 2007

Early on an extremely rainy and pretty damn cold Sydney morning, Poppy and I set off from Balmain, destination Katoomba, WHY? To ride the Narrowneck trail of course!

After the short drive to the Blue Mountains, luckily the skies cleared and we were left with just some light drizzle. We met Mick and Chris at the bike shop just in time for me (OK Poppy) to fix a puncture on my bike! Puncture fixed, the boys hired bikes and we were good to go.

We headed out of Katoomba past the 3 sisters lookout point and Scenic World. It started off nice and cruisey flying downhill at full speed only to be met by a steep uphill climb. After a short while the tarmac disappeared and we ventured on to dirt.

The track was undulating to say the least, after a lot of nice downhill sections there were a lot of not so nice uphill sections, saying that once we got in to the zone we were doing pretty well. We stopped several times to admire the stunning views below and to take the odd snap.

After about an hour and a half we reached our destination which is a lookout point down towards Warragamba Dam, the view was absolutely stunning, so, we sat down for a short while, ate some lunch and generally admired the views. After we revived and reenergised we cruised back to Katoomba.

The off-road section of the ride is 26km, the entire ride from Katoomba and back took us about 3.5 hours and that included stops…not bad for a beginner hey!

Check back regularly for more updates, Mick and I are going to try and do a ride every weekend til Mongolia!