Day trip to Birdwood

Saturday 14th January 2012

Got back in the saddle today, after a bit of a break. Back in Adelaide again, after spending New Year in Sydney. Planning to stay here for 3 months as it’s a skaters and cyclists paradise - there are bike paths and parklands everywhere, the city and the beach area is completely flat, so great for skating, but there are plenty of hills nearby to provide good challenging cycling.

I set off around 8.30 and headed east out of the city along the linear park cycle path that follows the River Torrens. It runs 35 kms from the coast to the foot of the Adelaide hills and is an excellent facility for cyclists and walkers.

Path ends here.

I followed the road for a few kms to Castambul, where I joined the Mawson Trail, this is a 800km off-road trail that leads all the way up to Blinman, in the Flinders Ranges. It’s a mixture of surfaces, some minor roads, some dirt tracks, some forest trails and some vacant land; the section out of Castambul was extremely rough and very steep.

After a while the route passed through some vineyards and the surface improved but it was still a very steep ascent through the Adelaide Hills.

By the Kangaroo Creek reservoir I saw a group of emus:

After about 45 kms I was back on tarmac again, passing through Lobethal and Mount Torrens. I should have taken some photos of these picturesque villages but was in too much of a hurry since I wanted to get to the main destination, namely Birdwood - home of the National Motor Museum of Australia, and have enough time to view the exhibits before cycling back to Adelaide.

It was nearly 2pm by the time I reached Birdwood, having cycled 65kms almost entirely uphill or so it seemed. Had lunch then spent a very enjoyable 2 hours in the museum which had very few other visitors:

I decided to go a slightly different route on the return journey but made a wrong turn and ended up going in a loop for about 5kms. Avoiding the very rough Mawson Trail this time I stuck to the main roads which had very little traffic. It was downhill pretty much all the way once I got past Lobethal. Rounding a corner at speed I nearly collided with a koala (with joey) hurrying across the road. It went part way up a tree on the other side then stopped still so I was able to get some decent photos:

Then it climbed further up the tree, the large joey was clearly visible. Quite a heavy load to carry.



Then a few kms later I saw some rare albino wallabies behind a wire fence:

I passed by Kangaroo Creek reservoir again, this time from the other side:

… and was back in Adelaide by about 7.30pm after a total of 138kms and a very enjoyable day's cycling. Back for more rides soon, there are certainly plenty of good routes to check out here.