Day 0 – Adelaide to Mundaring Weir

After months of planning and (slightly nervous) anticipation, our Munda Biddi adventure has finally begun.  Both Tim (Tennis) and I live in Adelaide and we had to fly to Perth with all of our luggage and bikes. We’ve called this blog Day 0 as most of it was actually spent getting to the start of the trail.

We arrived at the Adelaide airport around 5:15am and checked the bikes and trailers in. I’m not sure why, but I was expecting this to be a more difficult process than it ended up being.  I guess being AFL Grand Final eve most people were heading east, not west.

Once we arrived in Perth it was time to put the machines together. We found a nice vacant spot next to the oversized baggage pick-up area and decided to set up shop.

We discovered our first hurdle once we opened up the boxes…two flat tires on Tennis’ bike before we’d even clipped in.  This doesn’t sound too serious, but with tubeless tyres, pancake flats are kinda tricky to deal with, they need the rapid inflation of compressed air to make them take the bead.  We used our only two CO2 canisters and luckily got them back up to pressure.

After an hour or two putting everything back together, we set off for Mundaring in the Perth hills.  We were lucky enough to meet a couple called Bruce and Gwenda who gave us some directions for ‘the scenic route’ which largely avoided main roads….they even drew us a map.  They also told us about an old fella named Ron for whom they’d drawn a similar map the day before.

Bruce’s map took us up the heritage rail trail from Midland to Mundaring, which is a pretty steady 16km climb on the pea gravel that this area is known for.  The terrain, surface and hot and muggy conditions made for a tougher day than we’d expected…we haven’t even reached the Munda Biddi yet!

We stocked up on groceries and a few beers in Mundaring which is the official starting point (northern terminus) of the Munda Biddi Trail.  The trail starts at Sculpture Park on the southern side of town.

Eager to get a few kms under our belt, we left Mundaring around 4:00pm and and set off for Mundaring Weir…only about 7km down the trail.  The first part of the trail is very fun…flowy single track that weaves either side of the main road.  The pea gravel I mentioned earlier made cornering a little interesting, imagine riding over thousands of ball bearings, Tennis even came unstuck for his first stack of the trip.

 

We soon found our rhythm and made it to the Mundaring Weir pub as the sun was going down, quite a long day.

The pub at Mundaring Weir is a great place, at first we thought we’d stumbled across a strange motorcycle Narnia, with rows of Harley Davidsons and road bikes lined up out front…not what you expect to see at a quaint little pub tucked away in the middle of the Forrest.  Although we were the only ones there who weren’t wearing leather, we had a great night sharing a few beers and a meal with a bloke called Millsy and his wife Sharon.

They were lovely people who were riding to Bussleton the following morning.  Apparently that ride will take them 3 hours by Harley….it’s gonna take us a week by 29er!

We camped in the pub car park and were asleep by 8:30pm, it was a very long day.