me and my girl will be in Canberra for my birthday weekend later this month and want to get a nice road ride in on the Saturday. We have all day so I was thinking of something around the 150k mark. Rural, climbs, nice lunch spot, rolling hills…While I have a Garmin it doesnt show me the way so something easy enough to follow would be nice. I am not really a fan of getting my cell phone out on every intersection. We will be staying in Dickson/Braddon btw.
I did see a ride mapped out in Cycling magazine maybe a year ago but I am more than happy to get a couple of ideas from you. We’d also be looking into doing a shorter ride on the Sunday before heading home.
I’d recommend Corin. Google Maps.
Rolling hills out in the country, then a nice climb up in the Brindabellas along a pretty quiet road, with cafe at the top with wood fired pizzas.
If you’re feeling fit you can descend past the cafe to the dam, but then you have to climb back out.
If you’re not up for that then the ride out the Gundaroo or Gunning is also nice. There’s only small rolling hills and no long extended climb like up to Corin. There’s also a dirt detour that’s super lovely and can be ridden on road bikes if you’re careful. Both towns have enough cafes to choose from.
36/28 will be fine as long as you’re not trying to do it quickly. Nice places to stop along the way and stuff too. If the weather is good you can go put your feet in the water woods reserve on the way up. Don’t stop on the way down, that descent is way too much fun.
Hey Marc, both climbs are beautiful for their own reasons. If you get to ride on a warm day I would go Corin as there is a camp ground where you can stop to dip your feet in the water if need be. Apollo Road (Honey suckle) is the harder climb in my opinion and the scenery climbing into it as you go through a small valley is probably my favourite.
If you start from Dickson or the city Honeysuckle will be quite a bit longer than Corin.
They are both amazing, from memory Honeysuckle is a shorter climb than Corin, and there are steeper parts on Honeysuckle.
Re traffic Honeysuckle might be quieter.
You are not making it easier to decide I am afraid Considering we will do this this Saturday, with a very nice weather forecast and probably more traffic than other times therefore, which route would you do? We will also start early-ish and have the whole day for the ride. We stay in town from Friday night to Sunday lunch time.
I’ve never done honeysuckle, but I’ve done Corin twice. One of which was riding out there during a race in the middle of the day and we didn’t hold up a lot of traffic on the way out there. Go via cotter rd. You could do uriarra rd as well but it’s not really that special and cotter rd is mostly down hill to start with and I reckon that’s where you’ll get most traffic.
But, the other guys here probably know better than I.
I know I am a bit of a pain here but having never ridden the road bike in Canberra I am a bit lost at the best of times. I think we will do Corin (and maybe Honeysuckle early Sun morning). Assuming we start in Deakin (theres a nice cafe to start a ride from I’ve learned) whats the nicest (and possibly straight forward) way to get to the Point Huts Road turnoff? Looking at the maps from there it should be fairly straight forward even for someone like me who cant read maps.
