2014-06-19 -36 145

Location

On a dairy farm, near Tatura

Participants

Lachie

Expedition

I had my last exam for the semester on Thursday and had been feeling a little restless from too much time inside and not enough crazy bike rides, Shepparton graticule was a virgin graticule and there were a few rail trails in the area I wanted to ride on. I got up early before my exam checked the coordinates, planned a route and packed what I would need for a long ride. After my exam I went home to change clothes, bought some gloves at Kmart and some supplies at the vic market and made it to Southern Cross station for the 12:52 train to Shepparton with plenty of time to spare.

Arriving in Murchison East at 3pm I set off on my bike for the ~20km ride to the hash. The first thing of note that I saw was a letter box shaped like a horse float.

I continued to zigzag through the back roads finding myself very close to the hash at a rather muddy road that appeared to only be frequented by tractors. Perfect more my road bike. I rode a few hundred metres down the mud road to find roads even less suitable. I had planned my route based on satellite images but the short section of grass I had to cross turned out to be a 3m wide irrigation channel and the road on the other side was a fence. I backtracked and went down the driveway of the farm to the dairy where I was greeted by a friendly dog.

After getting permission from the land owner who was busy milking his cows I walked through a swamp, jumped an irrigation channel(slightly narrowed than the previous one), climbed a fence and I was there. I surveyed my surroundings to find I could have taken a different driveway all the way there and that the swamp was right next to a silage pit and I had been probably been knee deep in poo. Geohash success at 4:42pm.

From there I continued on my bike ride to Wangaratta via Dookie Rail Trail, Wangaratta and Bright. Total distance 338km in 22 hours with highlights including:

-Doing a dookie in Dookie

-Drinking 1.5L of ice coffee in Wangaratta my first time through

-Accidentally going mountain biking in Porepunkah at 5am

-Making back to Wangaratta in time for the train.

Lowlights:

-Bright Brewery not being open at 6:30am

EDIT: turns out Sheparton was not a virgin graticule.