The North East Tasmanian Rail Trail

Today was a lovely day. We got up before sunrise (05:00) and were on the path to the North East Tasmanian Rail Trail before the sun came up.

Compared to everything we’d ridden to date, and standing alone, it was a delightful leisurely roll through rainforest, farms, granite cuttings with overgrown ferns, old growth forest and logging areas and little makeshift station memorials where we had coffee and a breather.

We didn’t see many people — just Len, a bike packer we’d spoken to last night and two mountain bikers, a couple who were doing all the local runs and had completed the trail numerous times.

The couple advised us to take a gravel road shortcut south of the highway, but the locals in Branxholm had an opposite opinion and warned against it. Local knowledge trumped interstater and we pushed on to Derby via the Blue Derby Valley Ride path. It was a “family friendly” mountain bike trail that was just a tad too “technical” for my fully loaded Serena.

When we got to Derby we stopped at the Bark Off Biking MTB store where the owners Josh and Luke organised a shuttle to St. Helens for usWe’re running behind time and if we’re to make our Freycinet Lodge booking on 17 December, we need to “jump ahead” a little., so we checked in across the road at The Dorset Hotel.

I had a fish whilst waiting for the pub to open, and hooked a nice little brown trout, about 40-45cm by my estimation.The banks of the river were riddled with platypus burrows, particularly where I was fishing from, and with trees either side preventing me from moving left or right along the banks, and not wanting to trample the burrows into the water, the fish eventually took me under a log and snapped me off. It was such beautiful trout water, and I was delighted that I had the foresight and fortitude to lug my fishing rod all this way. I would’ve been really pissed if I couldn’t fish it.

Danielle waited at a gazebo where she could check on both her Twitter feed, and the half-naked French boys in the van opposite. 🤣

We had dinner and beers at the pub, then I fished some moreTurns out I’m a half-decent cast of the fly rod when I’m drunk 😂 but I didn’t catch anything!, called Declan and Anneliese then went to sleep.

Everyone here is MTB-mad. Everything is “gnarly” and they are all like Californian surfer types, “shredding chutes”, “sessioning” and “eating shit” when they fall off. I like when a little community has its own lingo and ways of communication that both establish an insider and keep outsiders in the dark. Love it!