Riding old gold mining tracks. Dirt Alt Series 3 Episode 6

The weather app said today was going to be fine with the rain but a little bit windy. It is windy but it is sprinkling as well so yeah they're never right. I might go past there's a motorbike store up the road where I can just get some of those cheap wet weather pants so I'm not sitting on my seat in water if it does come down a bit more. Hopefully it's just light. Anyway, I'm planning to head to a place called the Bridal Track. It's a track west of Sydney, northwest so I'm gonna start making my way back up and see what that's like. It's near a town called Bathurst. I rode out into the light rain. I got to the store and grabbed a pair. They were almost like wearing a garbage bag, well as long as they do the job. I headed north and then onto the motorway that would take me to the west. Then the inevitable of riding in a big city, traffic jams. Look at that, the truck driver is probably a motorbike rider giving me room and knows that lane splitting is actually legal in this country. Finally free of the traffic, I opened it up. I started making my way up into the Blue Mountains. The reason they're called the Blue Mountains is that they are densely populated by oil-bearing eucalyptus trees, so the atmosphere is filled with finely dispersed drops of oil which in combination with dust particle of water vapour scatter short wavelength rays of light which are predominantly blue in colour. The Blue Mountains also make up part of the Great Dividing Range. It had been threatening to rain all the way up the Finally it started to fall. Then the fog started to engulf the mountain. As visibility was getting so low I pulled over for a bit. I wasn't far from starting to descend down the other side of the mountain and hopefully out of the fog. So I decided to get back out there. It was a little bit tricky trying to find a safe gap in the traffic with all the fog. Eventually I did make it below the fog or is it cloud when you're up this high? I descended down amongst a fair few trucks. It started to look like it was clearing up. There were a few patches where rain was falling but I think I'd made it through the worst of it. I rode into the town of Bathurst. We made it to Bathurst and that wasn't the most fun riding going over the Blue Mountains. Luckily I did get those pants because my legs are dry. Chest is dry around my hips. It's a bit of wet patches only on the front and I think I must have just dripped down. Anyway going to get the GPX file out and try and find this bridle track and see if it's worth heading west for. I made my way through town. Then on the hillside on the other side of town I saw a sign that I'd seen before. Mount Panorama, home of Australia's most famous car race. Seeing I was here and with plenty of daylight left I thought I may as well go check it out. The one great thing about the race circuit is that it is on public roads so you're allowed to ride it throughout the year when the race isn't on. I got onto the track and turned right which put me onto the start finish straight and where all the pits are. The Mount Panorama circuit was first used on the 16th of April 1938 for the Australian Tourist Trophy meet which was actually a motorcycle race. It was followed two days later by the Australian Grand Prix for cars. The track is known for its 174 meter elevation between its lowest point and highest point. After getting up the mountain you go across skyline and then you can see why they call it Mount Panorama. Then comes a series of turns that the circuit is famous for and the drivers love but it must feel like you're hanging on by the seat of your pants. With a quick drop in elevation make it hard to see over the bottom of the car to pick your line. Then it is on to the stupidly fast straight as you descend down the mountain. The race cars get to 300 kilometers an hour along this path. Seeing I was so close really couldn't not have a lap around the mountain. It's weird to be able to ride on a racetrack. I left Bathurst on the Duranama Road towards Hills End. I came around a corner which revealed a beautiful valley which the road hugged the side of, weaving in and out of the gullies. The road was a little bit patchy in sections. There are so many rivers and streams out here just like this one. I finally came to the dirt and there is a sign to show me I'm now on the bridal track. The name of the track comes from the horse livery which distinguished it from roads and carriageways. It was a common term used from the mid-1800s to describe many of the foot-worn trails that developed between towns and villages where due to the narrow sections travelers had to guide their horses by the bridle. It is a beautiful little valley. Now that sounds like an adventure rider's dream. I dropped down into the valley road beside the Macquarie River. It was around the 1850s this narrow track appeared between Bathurst and Hills End when gold was first discovered at Hills End. It was only suitable for pedestrians and riders on horseback. It wove a very winding hilly trail along the steep cuttings and over the hills beside the Macquarie and Turon rivers. In 1874 some improvement works on the track were carried out by some of the locals of Bathurst. This allowed a buggy being pulled by a single force to be the first to complete the journey along the bridal track. The track has several places to camp beside the river so I thought I'd check the first one out. It looked okay with open grass areas beside the water but I wanted to ride more of the track first before thinking about a camp spot. The track has been closed several times over the years due to washaways and rock falls in 1909, 1912 and 1917. The track was expanded to its current width between 1937 and 1940. In 2010 the road was closed as a through road here at Monaghan's Bluff due to a landslide. It took over a decade before the acquisition of several properties had been carried out to allow a detour to be built which commenced in 2021 and on the 13th of February 2023 the bridal track was reopened to through traffic. The track got quite narrow in sections. You'd have a hard time even getting a bike past a four-wheel drive let alone another four-wheel drive. The track is 52 kilometers long from Duranumon to Hill's End. I pulled into another place to camp but it was very sandy so I decided to backtrack a little to another site I'd seen from the track. Well that looks like a decent spot to camp. I think I found a camp spot. It's about two meters, meter and a half, two meters from the water to where I'm here. There's no forecast for heavy rain, just some light showers so the river shouldn't rise. I saw some kangaroos here so I thought it must be good if they're here. Good soft grass. The kangaroos definitely didn't seem to want to hang out with me. It was time to get the gear off the bike and set up camp which was just a tent. It's getting quite dirty but I don't know how to clean it. I have tried to wash it and see that yellow to that yellow. It still works though. There are a lot of fish jumping in this river. The sign right at the start said something about salmon and trout. So I'm gathering it's them. Not the biggest fishermen. Don't have a rod or anything. Something interesting happened earlier when I'd finished the lap around Mt Panorama or Bathurst Raceway. I'm not sure what it's called, whichever. A guy passed me the other way. I think it was a KLR I think and he pulled up next to me. I think he was from Norway. He just went Joe, Joe Ryan and I was like yeah yeah yeah and he went I'd seen you on YouTube and I'm going down to Tasmania to ride around the island. So he'd seen me halfway across the road and now I was doing it. He'd got a old secondhand bike and he'd started in Cairns and was just going down the coast. How cool is that? Just guys exploring. I mean I do it here but he's come all the way across the other side of the world and he said he wasn't that experienced. He'd been in Fraser Island, that's all sand and he had a bit of trouble. He learnt pretty quick he said. He's probably better than me by now if you're going through Fraser Island and yeah he's down at Tassie. He was having trouble finding dirt tracks and dirt roads so I gave him the website I've been using so hopefully that will help him further down and I didn't have that website when I was in Tasmania. Maybe he'll find some really good tracks down there. It's just awesome to see other people out there exploring. Just going I'm going to do that. He didn't have much of a budget and yep just going to make it happen. What were the chances of bumping into each other in Bathurst of all places? Mind-blowing. Probably rained here yesterday but I'm still going to see if I can find some wood or sticks or something to have a fire. Hopefully it's not too wet. That might work. The remnants of a lot of water coming through here. As I said there's no rain forecast so this is probably still below where I'm camping so yes back on the tinfish for dinner. No it's not my favourite it's just easy. Seems cicadas have already shredded their skin here. I wonder if that's what they're doing on the first day with that wall of sound from the cicadas. Probably the loudest cicadas I've ever heard. They're everywhere. Shells of their skin are everywhere. Every tree. Oh there's about 30 up there. I don't know much about them except they can get really noisy. I could hear the sound of rushing water further down the stream so I decided to investigate. Spotted deer I think. Which just yep it spotted me. Okay don't think I heard a shot from this far. Didn't know there was deer out here. Bambi on the rocks. So this is what's making all the white noise from the campsite. The water passing through these rocks. Can't see the deer. Sorry about that I was actually trying to make as much noise as possible because of snakes but the deer heard me. Couldn't grab a picture. Okay let's see if I can get off the river dry. And when I say make as much noise as possible for the snakes I guess I really mean vibrations because they feel them. I walked back to the tent but once I'd been back for a few minutes I'd noticed the animals had come out again. So two deers at a time and a lot of kangaroos. And again I didn't have the long lens with me. I wonder if this is the best grass. Like just there. Well I wasn't going to forget the long lens a third time. And what's the saying? Third time's a charm. We'd seen both kangaroos and deer. The kangaroos were keeping a close eye on me from the top of the ridge. It was time to get the fire going. It is good to have enough time to get a fire going for the first time on this trip. So I watched the flames dance over the wood. I thought that my decision to come check out the bridal track was definitely worth the venture west. Even if it did mean having to ride over the wet foggy blue mountains. And the great thing was I still had more of the track to go.