Yea verily Yea

My daughter Jess is doing the 4 Rivers bike trail in Korea in a couple of weeks. For a shakedown she and her partner wanted to try a longer bike ride, so we set off last Saturday to ride part of the rail trail from Yea to Mansfield, around 85 kilometres, and back again the next day.

It must be a decade since I last rode 170 kilometres on a weekend, and despite a couple of weeks of desultory training, I was mighty tired when we rolled into Mansfield on Saturday afternoon.

It was definitely a cycle to somewhere.  My $75 Shogun Trailbreaker bike was by far the oldest and probably the cheapest bike we encountered, but it did a great job.  There are two long hills, one up to Cheviot Tunnel and the other to Merton pass, that are a bit of a slog.  We were glad to get over each of them.

The scenery is magnificent, and it is a nice time of year to ride the trail, with lots of green, and blossom, and baby lambs and lamas.  Spring is also Magpie swooping season here, and as I have a black and white helmet, I seemed to get swooped the most.  I work on the basis that life is more a matter of being scared rather than being hurt, so mostly I just ignored it, though a couple of unexpected swoops gave me a fright.

All in all, a great weekend, and I think, a week later, that I have just about recoved.