Muckleford I136 Bushland Reserve

VKFF-4282

31st March 2024

Second push bike outing for the Easter weekend. This time following the Castlemaine to Maldon rail trail. This isn’t a typical rail trail as the train line is still active. Rather it follows along beside the track used by the Victorian Goldfields Railway line which runs a train a couple of days a week. Castlemain is 100m lower than Maldon. I’d prefer to have the first half of the ride be harder than the return journey, so I started at Castlemaine. The bike track has more climbs than the actual rail line and is fairly rough in a few spots. I was a little bit concerned about the poor radio being bounced around in the pannier bag. It was well packed. But being on the rear pack rack, it was still being bounced a lot.

The track runs past Muckleford I136 Bushland Reserve, VKFF-4282, about 5km out of Castlemaine. Rode up to Maldon and enjoyed a couple of sandwiches and a drink before riding back and stopping in the reserve.

The area is open enough that I could easily ride the bike into the bush and set up 50m off the main track.

Managed 21 contacts on 40m over the space of about 25 minutes. Tried going to 20m but the band was wall to wall with contest stations. So I didn’t bother and instead packed up and finished the cycle back to Castlemaine station.

• TRACK STATISTICS
• distance travelled: 39.31 km
• time: 4:39:39
• elev. min/max: 269 m/361 m
• elev. gain/loss: 641 m/-640 m

There’s quite a few parks in the Castlemain area. I’ll have to come back for a weekend visit I think.