Nedly on his Treadly: Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail Tour

A few weeks ago I repaired my touring bike, the Surly Long Haul Trucker (which I call Florey), which is the bike I rode 9000 km around Europe for 3.5 months a few years ago. I replaced her brake pads and gave her a general tune up and having done this, I was keen to head out on some more bike tours since I haven't done any for a while.

I seem to be lacking in friends who are willing to come along on bike tours with me, but a mate Shane was up for it. I figured the Queens Birthday long weekend would be ideal for heading out on a tour, and I was thinking of doing something like catching the train out to Wangaratta then riding back via the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail to Myrtleford, turning off to Lake Buffalo, then across and down through Alexandra, Buxton Marysville and back to Melbourne. However, it would have been about 350 km, which is a fairly large distance to cover over three days.

Shane had to be back in the lab on Monday (the Queens Birthday) to run some more experiments, so we decided we'd just do a little two-day tour, and thought the Lilydale-Warburton trail would be a good one to check out since it was close to Melbourne and fairly flat/easy.

So I woke up early on Saturday morning (8:30 am), threw some gear into the panniers, and Shane rode over to meet me.

About to embark on our two day rail-trail tour: me with my top half looking like a road/racing cyclist, and bottom half looking like a tourer/soldier; Shane dressed in normal clothes, because that's all you need for touring!

We then headed off at about 10:30 am to the Northcote Plaza for food supplies for the weekend. Ah, it was good to be touring again!

We were only 500 metres down the road from home, just turning into the plaza car-park, when Shane's tyre suddenly exploded! After the initial shock of the loud bang, I had to laugh. Lesson 1: always carry a spare tube (Shane had one, but I didn't) and fit your touring bike with quality tyres (I had Schwalbe Marathons on but Shane just had the stock tyres; his good tyres were on his other touring bike).

The puncture in Shane's tyre; it appeared that the tyre had somehow slipped off the rim.

Shane replacing his tube at All Nations Park, Northcote.

I left Shane to fix it while I ducked back home to get my toothbrush which I realised I'd forgotten, then we reconvened at the Coles. We just needed to buy for dinner (a packet of pasta and a jar of sauce) and breakfast (oats), and some tuna tempters (I had the rest of lunch covered with some tomatoes, home-grown lettuce and dumpstered bread and cake already packed).

We decided it would be prudent to just ride to Richmond Station and catch the train out to Lilydale rather than fighting the city traffic for a couple of hours to get there. We got to the station 4 minutes before the train left - perfect timing!

The touring bikes on the train to Lilydale.

I hadn't been on the Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail before but I figured it'd be easy to find and follow. I also had the MotionX-GPS App with some pre-downloaded map tiles on my phone, as well as the dynohub, cache battery and E-Werk set-up for charging my iPhone as I was riding, which I'd used throughout my Europe tour.

It was a beautiful day for a cruisy tour, the sun was shining and there was no wind, although it was a little cold. The cool temperature wasn't an issue because once you start riding, you quickly warm up, and need to start stripping off layers of clothing. And that provided another lesson for Shane who will be embarking on an ~18 month tour riding from Melbourne to London later this year. Lesson 2: wear layers of clothing such that they are easy to take off and put back on, in order to easily regulate your body temperature.

The trail itself is 40 kilometres with a well-maintained fine gravel surface. The scenery was pleasant and as one would expect, being a rail-trail, the gradients were gentle. I was also quite surprised by how well-used the trail was, with plenty of other touring cyclists, recreational cyclists, joggers and walkers. I was thinking how great it was that the locals had this asset there to use.

Lunch: tuna, tomato and lettuce sourdough sandwiches, half way along the Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail.

Enjoying lunch in the sunshine, we watched other trail-users pass by. There was a group of oldies passing on their lightly-laden touring bikes, and seeing my bike loaded with four panniers and a tent, sleeping bag and self-inflating mat on top of the rear rack, one of them called out "where's the kitchen sink?!" Good one, mate. I chuckled but couldn't think of a come-back before he was out of earshot.

Just as we were about to head off, another bloke rolled in on a peculiar looking bike - and I say rolled, because he wasn't pedaling! The peculiar bike also came with a peculiar bloke; he pulled up beside us, beer can in hand, and started chatting, asking us where we were headed. He suggested a place which he knew about where we could camp, near a skate-park but before a pub - if we went past the pub then we'd gone too far! And he reckoned the pub put on a good meal too, so we could eat dinner there.

We asked him about his unusual bike and he proceeded to inform us it was an electric assisted/powered bicycle, and that one battery could carry him about 40 km, and at speeds of up to 60 km/h on the flats. He explained he was at his turn-around point, so that he could get back home before the battery went flat, so that he didn't have to pedal, because he reckoned he never used the peddles, and had no desire to! He told us a few stories about how he would ride it to the pub and take his charger to charge the battery up while he enjoyed a meal and a few beers. He was a friendly bloke, but odd. We bode him farewell and continued on our merry way.

Me on the Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail near Woori Yallock.

View from the Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail near Woori Yallock.

Shane on the Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail near Woori Yallock.

Since we hadn't left Melbourne until late morning, it was nearing dusk by the time we reached Warburton. We stopped in at the IGA for some milk for breakfast, and discussed what our next move would be. I hadn't planned where we would ride from Warburton; we could head in any direction we pleased, we just needed to find somewhere to camp, which I didn't expect to be difficult. We consulted the map on the iPhone and decided to take another bike trail marked on the map which could be accessed from the Donna Buang Road or Yuonga Road.

A screen-shot of the MotionX-GPS Maps, a very nifty app because the map tiles can be pre-downloaded and the maps show terrain and bike trails. The Lilydale-Warburton Trail is in light blue and the O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail is in dark blue.

I've climbed Donna Buang several times on a racing bike, but not on a touring bike. You really notice any sort of gradient when you're loaded up, and it was good little climb up to the trail, which upon reaching, we discovered was called the O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail.

Getting onto the O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail from Yuonga Road.

The view looking south towards Warburton from the O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail.

I didn't previously realise there was an O'Shannassy Aqueduct, even though I work for Melbourne Water. I figured it would be a good opportunity to learn a bit about the history of the company I work for. I later discovered that the aqueduct had been decommissioned in 1997, and I'm guessing the trail wouldn't have been open to the public if the aqueduct was still in use. The trail was in quite good condition, the scenery was splendid with ferns and towering eucalyptus trees, and the gradients were even gentler than the rail trail (which you would expect being an aqueduct trail), except for a few short sections where the trail was quite steep where they needed a siphon to cross a deep/difficult gully.

The O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail just after crossing the Donna Buang Road.

A view from the O'Shannessy Aqueduct Trail.

Since it was getting dark, we were keeping an eye out for an ideal spot to pitch the tent. We found the perfect spot with just enough daylight left to unpack, set up the tent and gather some firewood. However, everything was quite damp and I anticipated that it would be difficult to light. The fire wasn't necessary for cooking the pasta since I had the Trangia with me, but it would be nice for some warmth, and what is camping if you don't have a camp fire?
I was pretty sure the matches were inside the Trangia. My sister Rosanna had borrowed it a few weeks previous for a hike in Wilson's Promontory, so I hoped they were still there. It turned out they were, and I took them out to see if the we could ignite the tinder; I struck the match and the head crumbled; there wasn't even a spark! I tried another couple and the same thing happened each time. It appeared the matches were wet, Rosie must have packed the Trangia away without drying it :( Lesson 3: ensure you have a source of ignition for lighting a fire, such as dry matches, water-proof matches, a butane lighter, a flint and steel, etc. I took a mental note to pack a lighter inside the Trangia before the next trip.

Presently though, it had gotten dark, we were getting cold and we were quite hungry, and without fire we would have neither warmth nor dinner! We had the bright idea of pocking a few matches each to see if our body heat could dry them out. I tried again a few minutes later, but the same thing happened. I waited another five minutes and eureka! I successfully lit a match. I'm not sure I'd ever been so happy to have lit a match! We had the metho in the Trangia ready to go so that it was easy to ignite. We decided to cook dinner first and work on getting the fire going later.

We cooked up and ate the simple dish of pasta and sauce with no further issues. Then we used the burner in the Trangia to assist with lighting the fire. Even with the metho burning under the pile of leaves/twigs we'd set up, it took some effort to get it started, and we couldn't have done it without that burner. Ah, Trangia's are great! So versatile.

Our little campfire, with the Trangia pots drying around it.

The good thing about camping is that it's easy to get to bed early (something I generally struggle with). Unfortunately though my old synthetic-filled Roman sleeping bag wasn't up to the challenge of the cold night, and I couldn't sleep properly so I was very tired when we got up at about 9 am.

The campsite

The campsite.

O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail: where we'd come from

O'Shannassy Trail: where we were headed.

Breakfast by the campfire.

After breakfast we packed up and departed.

Riding the O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail

The O'Shannassy Aqueduct, decommissioned in 1997. It was an impressive engineering feat, a couple of metres deep and running for some 80 km from the O'Shannassy River to Surrey Hills Reservoir (although the trail only runs for 30 km).

O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail: where we'd come from, and in the distance a group of hikers.

O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail near the O'Shannassy River.

We reached the end of the trail at the O'Shannassy Weir and had a look around before heading down the road to the Warburton-Woods Point Road.

O'Shannassy Weir

Reflection off the water at O'Shannassy Weir (you can see the weir on the right hand side of the photo).

A tall tree fern at O'Shannassy Weir.

Lesson 4: regularly check to make sure all your nuts and bolts are tight, and carry cable ties and a range of tools. On this occasion, a shifter or spanner was required, which we didn't have, so we later found a piece of whipper-snipper cord and used it to tie the rack to the frame.

Shane's rack came loose (the seat-stay fasteners) and the whole rack rotated backwards while descending a bumpy section of road. This cracked me up!

We got back to Warburton and wanted to get back onto the O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail to follow it west and then join back up with the Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail. We checked out the map and found the most direct route was up Martyr Road and then the Donna Buang walking track which intersects the aqueduct trail. This turned out to fraught with difficulty though. First we faced a surprise 27 % gradient which got me quite excited. Thanks to the low range gears of the Surly's, we were able to ride up spinning away in first gear at about 4 km/h, which significantly raised the heart rate.

Shane posing for a photo before we rode up the little hill.

Looking back down the hill from the top; golf course on the right (I didn't know there was a golf course in Warburton).

Just over the top of the hill was the start of the Mt Donna Buang walking track, and for us a "short-cut" to the O'Shannassy Aquaduct Trail.

As with most short-cuts, it turned out to be much longer than the standard route, as we discovered the track was a really muddy, steep, over-grown and poorly maintained excuse for a track! It took us fifteen minutes to travel 150 metres before we consulted the map again to reconsider our route.

Shane contemplating the walking track.

We calculated we still had almost 500 metres to reach the aqueduct, and with the aqueduct at about 300 m elevation, we would have to climb 80 metres in that distance, according to the contours, so at an average gradient of one in six, or ~16%! We decided to turn around and cut our losses.

Our little unsuccessful "short-cut" up Martyr Road and the section shown in blue is the Donna Buang walking track.

Back-tracking on the Donna Buang walking track to Martyr Rd

Back-tracking on the Donna Buang walking track to Martyr Rd - Shane struggling with haul his bike up on the slippery slope.

So we rode back down to the Yarra River via Wellington Road instead of Martyr Road. I think if I'd tried riding down that 27% grade I would have hurtled straight through the T-intersection at the bottom and into the river. The brakes on the Long Haul Truckers aren't their strong points.

After that brief detour, we followed Surrey Rd a little further on to ride up to the aqueduct trail.

Lunch-stop in the Dee Road picnic area on the O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail.

A typical section of the O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail, heading back towards Woori Yallock.

The rest of the trail was flat except for two steep sections where the aqueduct utilised siphons. We were warned about the steep sections on the trail maps but they were easily rideable, aside from some annoying steps and narrow gateways designed to keep out trail-bike riders (and cars).
We eventually got back onto the Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail and cruised back towards Lilydale. As we passed the previous days' lunch-stop, I noticed a beer can sitting on the table, presumably left by the peculiar electric bicyclist.
We arrived in Lilydale just as dusk was settling in.