WHERE? 

This blog covers my short two week tour through my readily accessible, indeed, my only available location for a cycle tour right now - my home state of Western Australia. I know most of the readers of this site are US based and I also know the difficulties that you all face with Covid 19 and the US elections and I do have a lot of sympathy for your plight... But you see, for the time being we are wondrously Covid (and crazyass election) free here in Western Australia; however, we are locked down and unable to travel interstate or overseas. So any travel, cycle touring included, is restricted to within the confines of our own state boundaries. Luckily, Western Australia is a very big state with lots to see. 

WHAT?

In fact, it is too big and at times too remote and too difficult to traverse for anyone to just head out the front door on their bike without some sort of plan. And my plan was to ride a couple of weeks on a portion of the Munda Biddi Trail (MBT). 

Cut and paste from Wikipedia:

The Munda Biddi Trail is a long-distance mostly off-road cycling trail in Western Australia. It runs for over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) from Mundaring to Albany. The completed Munda Biddi Trail opened end-to-end in April 2013[3] when it claimed the title of the longest continuous off-road cycling trail of its kind in the world.

That's a wee bit of hyperbole. The trail is a bit of a dog's breakfast of sublime single track, old logging roads, obscenely rugged fire breaks, and paved/unpaved back country roads. Even though at times it may seem very remote, small towns and regional centres are never too far away. And there are a number of bush huts built specifically for the MBT - strategically spaced along the trail, so that you are never more than a day's ride from a town or trail hut. It takes about 15 to 20 days to ride the full Track from start to finish. 

The Munda Biddi... 

Heart

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I've ridden most of the MBT, a section here and another there, over the last six years but there were a couple of bits that still needed doing and one bit I hadn't done that was especially annoying me - the section from the small hamlet of Jarrahdale in the Perth foothills through to the town of Collie, a couple of hundred kilometres of mixed riding. That was the focus for this ride. 

A Perth to Albany walking track, the Bibbulmun Track was established first, well before the MBT and these two tracks follow roughly the same route, but only cross over in a couple of places. I've not walked any of the Bibbulmun, so can't comment on it, but I'm told it too is a lovely trail. I'm also told the MBT has the better huts, but the Bibbulmun has the nicer trail. It takes walkers about 8 weeks to walk the full track from start to finish.