RunKeeper: http://rnkpr.com/a6u6ys
This was the ride I'd been dreading. Kenmore onwards is fine, I do that most every day, but it was the ride from Bellbowrie to Kenmore I thought would be the killer. There's some rather large hills on that leg, especially the one big outside the Pinjarra Hills Sanatorium Hospital. Both in and out would be difficult, or so I thought. In reality, Bellbowrie to Kenmore was pretty mild and I did the 9.5 km ride in 23 minutes, with a higher average speed than my usual Kenmore to Indooroopilly ride to work. Sure, the aforementioned hill was hard, but it wasn't much harder than any other hill I tackle daily. At least there is a good run down the other side.
My original intention for this ride was just to see how long that leg took me, any more than that was a bonus. Twenty-three minutes being too short for a Saturday ride meant I had a to press on and Term from work had ridden Kenmore to Indooroopilly via Jindalee during the week, which made me want to check it out.
I'd done a bit of aerial investigation of that leg during the week and I wanted to see if there was a way through Rocks River Park at Seventeen Mile Rocks to Oxley that kept me off Seventeen Mile Rocks Rd. That and I enjoy riding along the Brisbane River; it's always picturesque, even when it's Brown.
Any Rocks River Park shortcut was a bit of a fail but at least I managed some cycle cross and learnt that hybrid tyres aren't really hybrid at all and offer just about zero grip once the bike is on gravel. I spied a short hiking trail up from the park and decided to take the bike up there to see where it led. It led me to the two pictures below:
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| From the top of the hill, overlooking the park and with the CBD in the horizon. |
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| South from the Park overlooking Darra and Oxley. |
Coming down the Oxley side and through the gravel was ok, just as I said before, not much fun on hybrid tyres. To stay off Seventeen Miles Rocks Rd, I headed up into some estate, hoping that it'd match up with what I remember of google maps during the week. I'm not sure if the way I ended up going was the way I'd seen on Google Maps, but it worked. There was one rather steep hill coming down Cliveden Ave, which was about the steepest hill I've ever descending on that mountain bike on road and I was saying to myself "I hope this is the right way because I'm pretty certain there's no way I'm going back up this hill if I've got it wrong." Luckily, it was all cool and I came out directly opposite the Oxley train station, which I think was where I wanted to emerge.
The ride from there to Indooroopilly was pretty normal, stuff I'd done a bunch during my UQ years. I did stop at Graceville for a powerade (blue of course) and a banana. Ingested, I continued on to Indooroopilly and under the train lines to head down Radnor St beside the river. Lucky it's a tight twisty road and I had no problems keeping speed with the cars through there. From there it was the usual route from Indooroopilly to Kenmore (ie Home from work), except instead of heading up Kersely Ave after the Kenmore Soccer Club, I headed through grounds and out to Marshal Lane and right onto Moggill Road. Why? Just 'cause. I'd never been through the soccer grounds before and I wanted to see where it went.
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| From the top of the hill on Moggill Rd near the Sanatorium |
It was pretty much smooth sailing from there, except for the ride up Moggill Road to the aforementioned Sanatorium. It was bloody hard work. The next challenge was the ride up from Bainbridge Dr to where Moggill Road breaks in two. From there it was standard riding home.
Total Journey Time: 3 hours 6 minutes
Total Pedal Time: 2 hours 23 minutes
(apologies for the bad images. I only had my wife's 1.3MP phone camera with me)
