– a peaceful ride through lush countryside –
Upfront let me declare that Niran and I are not exactly exercise freaks! Nonetheless, we opted to spend the entire last day of our driving holiday biking the Tumbarumba to Rosewood Rail Trail and had an absolute ball!
Mind you we hired e-bikes in town, which made the ride effortless and allowed us to truly enjoy the scenery. We managed to spend the entire day out – returning the bikes just minutes before closing time at 5pm. That’s saying a lot for us as we have a tendency to frenetically scoot about in the car from one place to another. Spending a day on a bike is pretty much unheard of. But it turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip.
here goes…a cold, early morning start
Starting from Tumbrarumba on a very cold and frosty morning we began the ride just a little uphill and out of town at the the site of the old Tumbarumba railway station.
There’s plenty of information on hand about the history of the railway station and the creation of the rail trail at a reclaimed old railway shed at the entry point.
After that, it was plain sailing with the occasional stop at the site of an old railway platform or three – with amenities, water and plenty of informative signage describing the history of the sites along the way.
We pretty much only had the company of cows along the way. Apart from ourselves, there was only one other rider exploring the trail on the day – a lady who despite her age, was streets ahead of us in terms of energy and fitness – so she quickly left us in the dust!
lunch at rosewood
We stopped for a while at the site of the old Rosewood Railway platform. We had brought our own lunch – which we ate on the old Rosewood platform. There were some interesting signboards to read that provided some information on the history of the town.
Rosewood has two cafes in town – including a live band playing at one of them on the Sunday we were there. And, wait for it, there’s also the Rosewood Gnome Retirement Village – definitely not to be missed!
It wasn’t long after this that clutzoid-me had a fall just as we were riding up to take a photo of this interesting-looking shed on the main road at Rosewood. Nonetheless, it didn’t stop me from riding the next 21 km home – says a lot for e-bikes!
Despite the fall, it was very special ride, especially with the sun at our backs as we rode back late in the autumn afternoon. Definitely a highlight – and so surprised that more people don’t know about this!
