Big Ride: King Valley

How the King Valley gravel route with everything from rail trail to gravel grinding became the ultimate weekend getaway

Words by Zoe Binder

Images by Zoe Binder

 

There are trips you plan meticulously for months, and then there are the ones where a group chat goes feral on a Tuesday night and somehow, by Friday you’re loading bikes onto the Subie and pointing it toward the Victoria’s High Country from Sydney. This Big Ride was very much the latter. Cerys, Adi and I had been talking loosely about doing a gravel riding trip together for a while. This was the kind of conversation that lives in the ‘someday’ pile until someone finally just books it, and I sure am glad someone did. In this case, it happened to be the lovely Christina at Ride High Country who planned an absolute cracker of a route for us to explore for Cyclist.

The plan was simple: ride the King Valley corridor from Wangaratta to Whitfield and back. A 196km out-and-back over two days, we would be following the rail trail out of Wang, as we affectionately called it, before peeling off onto gravel roads that wind through wine country, over mountain passes, and down into the valley to Wangaratta again on bike paths.

What made this trip a little different from my usual adventures was the company. For Cerys and Adi, this was their first ever gravel ride and their first multi-day ride. At this point I’ve done my fair share of epic days on the bike, although they mostly turn into stitch-ups mapped out by my good friend Ella Bloor. However this was my first trip where I’d taken people who were fresh to this style of riding and I was starting to worry in case we’d bitten off more than we could chew, especially with a chilly weather window looking to fall on the exact weekend we’d planned to do this.

Spoiler: they were absolutely fine. More than fine, actually. Adi will be buying her test Atlas gravel bike from Focus. And who can blame her, it’s purple and pink and rides like a dream.

Day 1: Into Wine Country

We roll out of Wangaratta on a crisp winter morning, tyres buzzing on the sealed surface of the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail that carries us out of town. There’s light drizzle in the early winter air, nothing dramatic, just enough to justify the rain jackets I had told everyone was ‘mandatory gear’. The rail trail is the perfect introduction for two first-timers giving gravel bikes a crack, but also very do-able on any kind of bike you have access to. It’s flat, smooth, and forgiving, with old station stops dotted every fifteen kilometres or so offering water, toilets, and a convenient excuse to crack out the sour lollies earlier than is probably necessary. We stop at the first one, dig into the bag, and declare the trip officially underway.

The girls are getting acquainted with their Focus Atlas gravel bikes, a relaxed, no fuss setup that suits the route perfectly, and both are grinning from the first kilometre. Adi, I quickly notice, hasn’t got a mount for her Garmin. Not forgotten… left deliberately! ‘I just want to ride,’ she says, and honestly, it sets the tone for the whole weekend.

As the trail carries us south and the town thins out behind us, the landscape begins its slow transformation. The flat rail corridor gives way to more undulating terrain and we pass into open dairy country, with rolling green hills so perfectly round and lush they look like a Windows desktop screensaver. We’re on the hunt for the one that most resembles the famous vision on all our laptops in circa 2005. Little lambs and even horses dot the paddocks, and we cross a handful of small bridges over bubbling creeks running full from recent rain. One of the farms we stop at has a few horses leaning over the fence checking out what we’re up to. A cheeky one even tries to give the bars of Cerys’s bike a quick lick, which we take as a sign to push on.

Taylor’s Gap stands as the first real test of the day. It’s a short rise that kicks up enough to earn its name. We arrive at the top with mud-packed cleats and a cloud of tiny flies for company, then tip over the other side and drop into a little descent that has us reaching for the gloves with the windchill. Then, rounding a bend, the mountains appear for the first time, Victoria’s High Country rising up ahead of us with rain dragging across the peaks. Lunch isn’t far now.

Lunch is at Cafe Fez, and it might be the most unexpected stop of the entire trip. We’re tucked under shawls on the verandah under heaters, bikes parked within easy reach, working our way through a whole board of traditional Middle Eastern food, finished with a chia cheesecake and a Persian love cake. I’m fairly confident that this was the first time I’ve eaten falafel mid ride – although it may not be the last.

We kit back up and hit the service station before we leave Myrtleford. The weather system that’s been circling us all morning has been visible on the mountains and threatening from a distance. But after lunch it has finally arrived – we restock with more lollies knowing what is coming.

What follows is the most beautiful and most challenging section of the ride, and on this particular day, they are the same thing. We ride past Buffalo Lake when the heavens properly open. The rain goes from ‘manageable’ to ‘committed’, and we put our heads down for the main gravel climb of the day which is a long, sustained haul that is wet, beautiful, and requires just enough concentration to keep the mind from complaining too loudly.

We carry on for some time and to be honest, you’ll miss some of the best views on this trip dear reader as it was so wet that no cameras were coming out. Our mission was to crack on and crack on we did. After a while, with my head firmly tucked down, I spot a flock of black cockatoos. They move through the mist surprisingly quietly, magnificent and completely indifferent to three soggy gals on gravel bikes staring up at them.

We crest the climb and the reward is immediate. Ahead is a long, sweeping gravel descent into Cheshunt, fast and loose and we’re all grinning the whole way down. As we roll along kangaroos hop across the road between the vines. It’s another moment so quintessentially Australian it almost feels staged. We push through, dropping into the King Valley for the final stretch into Whitfield, arriving right at 4:30pm as the rain eases to a merciful drizzle, as if the weather decided we’d earned a break right before dark.

The Valley View Caravan Park is exactly what you need at the end of a big, wet day. It’s simple, tidy and with the kind of bike wash facilities that feel like a gift from the universe when you’re standing there with a mud-caked drivetrain that needs to be of service the following day. We hose down the bikes, clearing them of mud and cow poo as the last of the light fades, then retreat inside to attempt the logistical puzzle of drying everything in a small cabin. With our jerseys draped over the fan, gloves on the heater and socks everywhere, no real estate is left uncovered. It was a picture that perfectly captured the general chaos of three women who packed for warmth and weight savings, now confronting the consequences of those choices.

We get dressed in eclectic combinations of warm clothes and shuffle down the road to the Mountain View Hotel for dinner. Inside, a fire is roaring, and within minutes the sensation returns to our extremities and the day starts to feel like an adventure rather than solid Type 2 fun. We order a bottle of local Pizzini wine, and only then learn that the same local winery actually owns the pub. We tell them about our wine the night before in Wangaratta where we had the exact same wine and loved it! No pub meal is finished without a sticky date pudding and the sticky date pudding at this local pub is extraordinary. A 5/5. A benchmark. I make a quiet vow, there by the fire, to order sticky date pudding at every pub I visit from this point forward in search of a rival. Just to verify my findings, of course.

We walk back to the cabins with borrowed umbrellas from the pub as it’s still pouring with the rain that I had convinced the girls earlier would be ‘a passing shower’ and hung everything from every available surface.

Day 2: Whitfield to Wangaratta

The sun doesn’t rise until late in winter in the valley, and so it’s 7am and still dark when we start the slow and thankless task of pulling on cold, not-quite-dry kit. Adi attempts to fast track the process with the hairdryer and successfully burns a hole through one of her brand new Attaquer gloves.

Before we head out the door, we go through the morning ritual of sunscreen application and this trip marks our first outing with Sun Motion, an Australian-owned suncream brand backed by cycling legend Grace Brown and made specifically with riders in mind. All three of us are converts by the end of the weekend. With the sun finally starting to peek through the valley mist for the first time all trip, we’re glad to have it.

Breakfast at Hobbledehoy Cafe and Distillery is warm, friendly and exactly what we need. Coffee, eggs and bacon feed our bodies, as the view outside, of mist draped across the valley beyond, feeds our soul.

After breaky we roll out into the first gravel sector of the day and almost immediately come to a stop. We’ve run into a dairy herd ambling across the road on their way to their morning milking. We pull up and wait while they plod along, unconcerned by us.

While our trip out yesterday was a steady, gradual climb into the mountains, today is mostly downhill. The legs, while not entirely enthusiastic about the news that they’re required to work again, find a rhythm quickly. The gravel sectors are varied: some sweeping and fast, some corrugated and a bit more technical. Cerys and Adi handle everything with an ease that is impressive for first-timers. There’s something about riding without a screen full of data, no watts, no heart rate zones, that makes you pay attention to different things. The girls are smashing it, and I can tell this will be a trip we remember for a long time to come.

The landscape shifts as the mountains recede behind us. We wind through the gravel roads, the King River running alongside us, and the paddocks green and luminous after all that rain. At one farm, a small turtle has made an ill-advised crossing of the road, and we stop to relocate it to the safety of the verge. Further along, a property reveals itself to be home to both camels and llamas, an unexpected and delightful combination that generates significant discussion for the next several kilometres when chat had started to drift off. A Maremma sheepdog at a nearby farm takes its job a little too seriously and chases us along an entire fenceline, protecting its herd.

After a few little rises through cut-outs in the road, the gravel eventually gives way to road sections as we track through toward Oxley. The three of us slot into a pace line and we absolutely send it, keen to get in to our lunch stop. Our gravel bikes highlight their versatility, being capable and composed on rough and corrugated dirt all day yet ready to go hard once you hit the tarmac.

We pull into Henley’s Wine Bar & Kitchen in nearby Milawa, where we test some local wine (come on… it’s a girls trip!). There is dedicated bike storage, a cosy fire, wood-fired pizzas that we eat with the ferocity of people who have ridden in the weather over the last two days. And there is sticky date pudding (I’ll let you in on a secret, it’s also a 5/5).

Fuelled up, we follow the bike path for the final 20km back into Wangaratta, a direct, smooth run in that gives us time to process the previous two days before the trip officially ends. We stop at the Quality Hotel Wangaratta Gateway and take a minute to relax before the drive.

Cerys and Adi start scrolling back through two days’ photos and laughing their heads off about the incident where a horse nearly licked Cerys’s bike, and I think about what this trip actually was. It was kind of epic. Nobody needed rescuing, the equipment performed flawlessly, but day one was properly tough in that rain and cold. While early winter may not be the ideal time for a multi-day ride, we still had a banger of a trip. Two friends who had never ridden gravel before said yes to something that looked a little unknown, showed up with no expectations and a bag full of technical fabrics and discovered that the King Valley is exactly the kind of place that will make a gravel rider out of you whether you planned to become one or not.

After the hot showers at the Wangaratta Gateway Hotel, we load the bikes back on the car, and point north up the Hume toward Sydney. Adi throws on her famous driving playlist and Cerys cracks our last packet of sour lollies. Nobody says much for a while. That’s how you know it was a good one.