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What is the Mawson Trail?
The Mawson Trail is one of Australia's iconic long-distance  bicycle trails. It meanders along 900+ km of 80% dirt roads, tracks, and trails from Adelaide up to Blinman in the northern Flinders Ranges. My own journey ended up running for 989 km (615 mi), including several wrong turns and corrections along the way and an extra ride from Blinman to Parachilna at the end.

Something about me
Through much of my teenage and adult life I was a sometime bicycle commuter. In the early ‘naughts, after moving to Adelaide, Australia, I gained an appreciation for cycling in the Adelaide Hills and around Adelaide, generally, for recreation, mostly on weekends. Over the past three years I’ve been cycling more consistently and, since retiring from work in 2022, I’ve gradually increased my weekly riding distance. I’d been thinking about the Mawson Trail for about two years. It’s a much longer ride than anything I’d done previously, but seemed like something that would be good for me to try.

Something about the bike
Up until recently I’ve only ever ridden a road bike and prefer the variety of positions afforded by the road bike’s drop handle bars. I year ago I acquired a second, gravel-specific bike, which looks and feels a lot like a road bike, but is fitted with much fatter 48mm tires that can run on low pressure – good for the Mawson Trail and for the rougher gravel trails I now sometimes ride closer to home.

How I approached the ride
The amount of time required to ride the full trail ranges from about 5-9 days for the young and very fit, to two weeks or more for the rest of us. As a relatively fit, 64-year-old in with no prior experience on long, multiday rides, I planned and did the trail in 12-1/2 riding days riding and two rest days, one after the 4th- and 8th riding days, respectively. Some cyclists who ride the full Mawson Trail camp along the way, while many stay in motels and caravan park cabins, or do a combination of both. Most ride in pairs or groups. I rode the Mawson Trail solo, but with support from my wife Jill and dog Tennyson, who were somewhere nearby in a car. The three of us stayed in a combination of pet friendly Airbnb's, a caravan park cabin, and a cabin at Rawnsley Park Station. In order to ensure availability of pet-friendly accommodation, we booked all the accommodation well in advance of the trip. The support crew carried all the food and clothing as well as some of the less-likely-needed tools and spare parts. This arrangement allowed me to carry a lot less extra weight than if I’d been camping or travelling entirely on my own. It also meant that in the late afternoon and evenings, my daytime solo rides were complemented by a nice holiday with my wife and dog. I very much appreciated having a shower and good bed to sleep in every evening. All in all I would say this arrangement was ‘glammier’ than ‘glamping’.

Some other helpful things for this ride
There are several apps I made use of, the most helpful of which were the dedicated Mawson Trail Guide app (which allows one to view their location on an accurate Trail map and stay on-track at all times, even when there is no mobile phone coverage), and the Epic Ride Weather app, which allows very accurate weather predictions, including wind speed and direction, over the course of a ride. I also borrowed a friend’s Zoleo Satellite Communicator which allows sending of text messages from a phone via satellite. Although I had no emergencies, it was nice to be able to occasionally communicate via text when there was no phone coverage, which in my experience turned out to be everywhere between Flinders National Park and Blinman other than when in a town.

How did the ride turn out?
In a word, it was fantastic. I held up well, the bike held up well, there were no accidents, and I was very fortunate with the weather. Riding as planned (21 October to 4 November, including the two rest days), the first week had very mild weather in the high 10s and low 20s. In the second week the temperature sometimes went into the mid-high 20s, but given the moderate breezes that frequented the ride, I rarely felt ‘hot’, at least not while riding. In the week after I’d finished the ride, the temperature in the Flinders Ranges shot up for a few days into the high 30s and 40 – I was very glad to have missed that! Weather-wise, I was also fortunate to not be bothered either by rain or by clay roads still wet from earlier rains, which can be unrideable. The impact of riding for two weeks in the open air, with expansive and scenic views was spiritually and aesthetically (as well as physically) uplifting. I’d certainly look forward to similar rides in the future. 

This journal
The journal is intended for anyone who wants to see some of what riding the Mawson Trail looks like or who wants to see the routes taken by an amateur cyclist during a two-week Mawson ride. The journal is divided into thirteen main sections, one for each day of riding. Each section includes a map of that day’s ride, indicating the route, the distance, and an elevation profile. Each section also includes a number of photographs (ranging from 5 to 34 per day), some though not all with descriptive captions. The purpose of the photographs is to give an idea of the sorts of things I saw along the way in each day’s ride. There are a lot of views of the trail in front of me, but that’s what I was usually looking at. I’ve tried to give a sense of the full range of landscapes I encountered, including flora and fauna, or at least what fauna didn’t run or fly away before I could stop to take a photograph. There are also some photos of built environments in towns I passed through, but I will confess that towns and built environments are under-represented, simply because I was more occupied with the trails and views outside of towns and oftentimes passed quickly through towns without taking any photos. There are a total of 217 photos in the journal. For those who would like to look at some photos, but not this many, I’ve included a ‘photo selection’ section at the end of the journal which includes just 38 photos from the 13 days of riding. For those who might be interested to see only the daily routes I took, but none of the photos, I’ve included a maps-only section at the end of the journal.