Cycle Touring Near Sydney: Mittagong to Wombeyan Caves (Return)

Pausing at the Wollondilly Lookout in Nattai National Park.

Essentials:

• Total distance ~130km / 2 days
• ~65km to Wombeyan caves (~3.75 hours)
• ~65km day two return to Mittagong (~3.75 hours)
• Total vertical ascent over two days ~3400m (~1700m each day)
• Train, Sydney Central to Mittagong, regular departures. Change at Campbelltown. Total transit time ~2 hours 15 minutes.
• Train, Mittagong Station to Sydney Central, departures roughly every two hours on weekends. Change at Macarthur or Campbelltown. Total travel time ~2 hours 15 minutes
• Check train timings at http://www.transportnsw.info/
• Total trip time: ~36 hours (Leave Sydney 9.00am Saturday, Arrive Sydney 6.30pm Sunday)
• Total cost: Accommodation = $0, Transportation = $8.30 (Opal card), Food = $28
• Route: (Mittagong) Old Hume Hwy to Wombeyan Caves Road all the way to Wombeyan Caves. Return the same way.
• Navigation: Samsung Galaxy Note 3 / Google Maps
• Photography: Samsung Galaxy Note 3, edited in Snapseed

Curve at the beginning of the long descent out of Bullio.

There is no cycling route anywhere in the world that is enhanced by the presence of cars. At best, our planet’s dominant form of motorised life constitutes an annoyance to the cyclist; at worst, it represents the possibility of injury or death. Naturally then, when cycling, dirt is strongly preferred to tarmac — not only because dirt routes are typically prettier, but because they discourage the use of motorised transport, making the entire experience of cycling them considerably safer and more pleasant.

The 130km-return route from Mittagong to the famous Wombeyan Caves in the NSW Southern Highlands is a superb example of just such a ride. It starts out with a few kilometres along the heavily trafficked box-store wasteland of the Old Hume Highway before transitioning onto the much quieter (but still tarmac) beginning of Wombeyan Caves Road.

Blue skies above the first kilometres of Wombeyan Caves Road.

WIthin 20km, however, the road turns to dirt as it winds downward alongside (and sometimes thru!) the looming rock formations of Nattai National Park and  past the awesome vista of the Wollondilly Lookout. From there the road passes vast tracks of pastureland (goats, cows, horses, packs of wild kangaroos) and then onward thru the hamlet of Bullio before beginning the long, fast descent of an 11-km series of switchbacks to the Wollondilly River at Goodmans Ford.

Reflections on the Wollondilly River from the causeway at Goodmans Ford.

Now, beyond Goodmans Ford, Wombeyan Caves road is officially ‘closed’. I say ‘closed’ because this closure has absolutely nothing to do with road conditions — the road is in reasonable condition for a 4WD (as ever) and completely passable, but has been closed as ‘unsafe’ owing to a standoff between the NSW state government and the local shire council over funds for road maintenance.

As a cyclist, of course, this has absolutely no impact on you, except to make the beautiful, tiring 11km climb from the river even more pleasant for the utter absence of cars. The route is genuine backcountry, heavily wooded and winding, with dozens of roos and even a rare echidna scooting from the track as I approach.

15 kilometres — almost all of it climbing.

I stop to fill my water bottles at stream trickling down the rocks (see this excellent article for some information about backcountry water sources) before I make camp. As the climb tops out at the intersection with Langs Rd, and with the day’s light ebbing fast, I find a lovely campsite some distance off the road on an unfenced hillside, heat myself some dinner on my DIY sideburner alcohol stove and tuck in for the night under the wheeling sky and the bright band of the Milky Way.

Bivy setup at twilight on the hillside.

Bicycle and gear covered in frost in the morning.

I sleep out in my bivy, and by midnight a frost has formed on my bag, my panniers, my bike and all the grasses around me. My Sea to Summit TKII down sleeping bag continues to be a non-lofting, utterly useless piece of gear that begs replacement, but I huddle in and make it thru the night without desperation or misery.

The Wombeyan Caves themselves are just a few kilometres down the hill from where I’ve slept, so I pack up after coffee and head down to devour microwave meat pies from the kiosk there like an insatiable monster that’s happened into town from the wild. On the cave park grounds, people are camped beside their cars and there are teenagers playing music and I am abundantly glad to have slept away from all this ‘civilisation’, never understanding why people would come to a place with such beauty and then choose to sleep in sight of cars and buildings.

Inside Victoria Arch cave.

I spend a few minutes walking the grounds, wandering into the vast vault of Victoria Arch cave, but not lingering too long. It’s an extended climb on the bike back up to the hill where I camped, but afterwards the long, fast descent of the climb I’d done the day before rolls out before me, flying down over rutted dirt and rocks and leaning into the corners.

Back at Goodmans Ford I grit myself again and face the long, long ascent to Bullio, thru Nattai again, and back up to the tarmac on the early section of Wombeyan Caves Road. It’s worth noting that both Strava and Runkeeper track the vertical ascent on each leg of the out-and-back at just above 1700m, making the route, which is not particularly long, pretty taxing nonetheless. As Alastair Humphreys mentions, part of the joy of an intensely physical trip is simply the immense relief that you receive when you finally get to stop.

As for equipment: the Surly Trucker continues to be a rock-solid beast. I’m also increasingly aware (especially on the long climbs that occur on routes like this one) that that bomb-proofness comes with a weight penalty. Which is to say, the bike is definitely heavy, and I find myself seriously considering finding ways to ditch the panniers (which are *so* convenient, but also tip the scales at almost 2kg for the pair) and travel pannierless with a saddlebag, frame bag, handlebar bag and handlebar roll. At the very least, it’s a project that should keep me busy.

I also used the USB charging port on my B&M Luxos IQ2 headlamp for the first time on this trip. and despite running GPS the whole time, finished up with the battery charge above 90% — generally gaining 1% charge every few minutes when my speed was over 15kph or so. Very pleased with this result.

I also used the giant BBB Fueltank XL bottle cage for the first time, which certainly gets a pass — keeping some of that substantial water weight forward on my frame rather than back in my panniers, which is good because my setup tends towards serious back-heaviness already.

Finally, the beer-can alcohol stove was an absolute winner — tiny and light and reliable and working just fine, even at near-freezing temps. It doesn’t allow much potential for adjustment, and once it’s lit, it’s lit until the flame burns out. Still, I’m increasingly convinced that this little stove may be just the thing going forward. Next task is to try another variation on the sideburner stove with smaller and more efficient jets.

Not actually!

Surly Disc Trucker — An Informal First-Look Review

This weekend, I threw rocks at a fox trying to steal my socks. This is not a Seussian riddle. It is literally true.

Some context: Having finally gotten the main elements of my new(ish) Surly Disc Trucker together (56cm with 26-inch wheels, modded with flat bars, MicroShift thumbies, a Tubus Logo rear rack and Ergon GP5 grips/barends) I decided it was time to take my inaugural shakeout ride. This is to say, an overnight tour, packed light(ish) with food, bivvy bag, camping mat and sleeping bag in a set of Crosso Twist 52L panniers (not quite full, but with all water stowed therein as well, for lack of bottle cages as yet!).

Having never actually properly loaded up my trusty steed before, I think my outlook as I steered the bike down across the Pyrmont Bridge over Darling Harbour and thru the streets of Sydney to Circular Quay could pretty accurately be described as ‘shitting myself’. The fear, however, quickly subsided as I made a happy discovery: a touch twitchy though the steering was with all the weight in the back (especially when out of the saddle), the Surly overall was rock solid — so stable that, even in traffic, I very quickly forgot that I was hauling around a significant amount of weight in my back end.

On the fast ferry leaving the inner harbour and Harbour Bridge behind for Manly on the north shore.

Wanting to avoid central Sydney’s murderous weekend gridlock, I popped onto the fast ferry across the harbour to Manly — a wonderful sense of travel-freedom — and headed off with my phone’s GPS speaking to me thru my pocket towards Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park thirty or so klicks north, rolling through backstreets, along bike paths and onto the shoulder of the occasional major road (unavoidable in these parts, unfortunately). The bike remained, in all circumstances, admirably stable. That legendary stability when loaded up is a characteristic of the frame geometry that’s earned it its informal title as the world’s most popular touring bike, and indeed is a major reason that I ended up going with one myself, but it’s still something that truly has to be felt to be appreciated.

That stability would get an even better test once I entered the national park itself. I’d scoped out a remote little rock outcropping overlooking the delightfully-named Coal and Candle Creek at the far end of a 4km firetrail called the Waratah Track (Google Earth is marvellous for just this sort of thing). Within a few hundred metres of the turnoff from the main road, however, it became clear that this wasn’t just a dirt road, but a full-on 4WD track, with steep, legs-churning-in-lowest-gear climbs thru heavy crud and fast, flowy descents strewn with big rocks and deep boggy spots. I hadn’t biked a proper trail requiring anything technical in years and yet, even loaded up, the Trucker was cutting confidently through all of it. Everything is more fun when you’re muddy.

A gnarlier-than-reckoned-on descent on the Waratah Track.

My drivetrain and brake rotors were gritting with sand and mud by the time I reached the end of the track, making the guiltily-consumerist part of my mind reflect on the eventual possibility of an expensive but maintenance-free Rohloff Speedhub. As the dirt track ended, it narrowed to a trail of bare rock that curved around towards an open spot with waving eucalypts and picture-perfect views of the boats moored down in the river far below me. No one would be coming this way in the hour before sunset. So: remove shoes. Remove socks. Fluff out bag. Eat peanut M&Ms and watch the world soften as it is gilded by its nearest star. In the gathering twilight I cooked a simple meal and watched the sky above the ridgeline opposite delaminate into fuzzy pastels, bending the light of the vanished sun as it rose orange-peach to yellow-green to deeper and deeper indigo, airplanes blinking like fireflies amongst the stars as they burned out from the darkness.

There are far, far worse places to go to sleep.

At length I slept. And then came the fox.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I am not concerned that my socks obviously smelled like food — because what else, really, could a fox be after in stealing them? But to wake to a rustling in the leaves less than two metres to my right and see a pair of glowing, obviously-non-wallaby eyes, was a thing significantly more alarming.

“Aaaaaaaaaaah!” I said with considerable dignity and composure, turning on my headlamp and weakly chucking a handful of pebbles in the fox’s direction.

Foxes, it should be said, do not attack people. Much less do they attempt to eat them. But I was not entirely convinced of either of these things at that moment. I tossed pebbles into the underbrush, following the sound of scuttling until it went away, and then bravely burned my camp stove high for a few minutes — a nod to some kind of atavistic impulse to frighten away nighttime beasties with a dramatic display of fire.

It was only when I woke in the morning that it became apparent what the fox was after: my socks, which I had cycled in wearing the night before, were up on the rock ledge where I had spotted the fox, intact but still (it bears mentioning) a bit ripe. The merino-wool-everything cycle tourist mindset, with its draw of natural odourlessness, now seems increasingly persuasive.

As for the ride out, post-morning-coffee: it was lovely, bright sun and cool air and chirping rainbow lorikeets in the branches. My Avid BB7 mechanical disc brakes performed admirably as I barrelled down the long, steep curves of Liberator General San Martin Drive past the river I’d slept perched above the night before; and the stock Shimano drivetrain complained mercifully little as I pushed it up the 300+ metres of hard climbing on the other side. Eventually, unhappily, I hit the Sydney suburbs again, and thus began the frustrating but entirely un-noteworthy hours of fighting past strip malls and petrol stations amongst aggressive, smoggy walls of traffic.

You can see that this review, though (if it can honestly even be called that), is only peripherally about this or that bicycle component, about this or that piece of gear. More, it’s a review about what that bicycle, that gear, have allowed me to do, where they’ve allowed me to go, and how effectively and unobtrusively they’ve done so. If you’re thinking about a Disc Trucker as an all-purpose utility tourer — do it. It’s a marvellous machine and I’m sure I’ll write more on it as my relationship with the bike (and other gear) progresses. But the real takeaway for me is where the bike took me — alone in the wilderness with a fox at arm’s reach and the moon silvering the quiet water of the river down below me. More than counting grams or arguing headtube angles, that’s what touring is all about.