Good road rides in/around Bris Vegas?

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Andrew Swan
I'm off to Brissy next week for holidays - can anyone suggest good road rides of anywhere between
30 - 100km?

Or better still, are there any regular rides/groups that I could join up with? I'm looking for
people that ride at a good training pace but not like nutter A graders or anything...

TIA,

&roo

This is a very good site for info re:rides/ races etc in BrisVegas

http://members.optusnet.com.au/vonberky/

This is a good summary of the Brisbane scene:

http://www.bq.org.au/events/rides/fav_rides.htm

Best places to join in on a group are:

Park Rd, Milton - Wed Morning or Sat Morning

Nepalese Pagoda, South bank - Saturday 6am (50K)

Enjoy...

If you speak to almost any cyclist in Bris, they'll know about the 'River Loop'. It's an unofficial 35km loop roughly following the River. Being a loop (!!), you can start anywhere, but say from UQ St Lucia, it goes through Indooroopilly, across the river into Graceville, Yerongpilly, Yeronga, Fairfield, Dutton Park, Highgate Hill, West End, cross the river again at Southbank and then back along Coro Drive bikeway to St Lucia. If you don't know Bris, that's probably not much help to you though...
Alternatively, you can pretty much rock into any bike shop and ask about organised rides. Some shops that I know of that have regular rides are Victor Cycles at Cooparoo, Lifecycle at Normanby 5-ways, Cycological in Elizabeth St, City, Planet Cycles at Woolloongabba. Good luck and happy cycling!
J

Brisbane.... beautiful place for a bike ride, once you get out of the city...!! the roads are all over the place.

there are a couple of rides from Brisbane that were my stock rides.

www.cycleogical.com.au have regular saturday morning rides varying from 80 to 100, highly recommended.

I lived Northside, Chermside.

Chermside, Samford, Chermside ~60kms round trip, rolling, 1 hill that can get you heart started.

Chermside, Dayboro, Samford, Chermside (Doughnuts @ Samford) about 80+ kms return.

Chermside, Samford, Mt Nebo, back via The Gap, hige ride, 100+ and an extreme hill climb up to Mt Nebo.

they are all north of the city, riding out to Cleveland is great, via Old cleveland road, you can get out to cleveland further south and come back via Old Cleveland usually a tail wind and great road, anything from 60 to 100+ depending on where u start from.

hope this helps.... you can email me for more directions if you like
or just hook up cith cycleogical, they have a wednesday morning ride as well, leaves 6am from their Brisbane city shop.

enjoy the weather and the people.

cheers
Mikey

[email hidden]

Andrew Swan said:

I'm off to Brissy next week for holidays - can anyone suggest good road rides of anywhere between
30 - 100km?

Or better still, are there any regular rides/groups that I could join up with? I'm looking for
people that ride at a good training pace but not like nutter A graders or anything...

TIA,

&roo

Thanks for the replies guys, all v. helpful - my printer has been busy just now! :-)

P.S. What sort of weather are you guys having right now? Is it cold enough in the morning for
leg/arm/foot warmers, etc.?

&roo

No warmers necessary, we are in the middle of any early summer. I get up at 5am & have been wearing
shorts & T shirt for the last week.

John L.

Andrew Swan said:

Andrew Swan said:

I'm off to Brissy next week for holidays - can anyone suggest good road rides of anywhere between
30 - 100km?

Or better still, are there any regular rides/groups that I could join up with? I'm looking for
people that ride at a good training pace but not like nutter A graders or anything...

TIA,

&roo

Thanks for the replies guys, all v. helpful - my printer has been busy just now! :-)

P.S. What sort of weather are you guys having right now? Is it cold enough in the morning for
leg/arm/foot warmers, etc.?

&roo

Andrew Swan said:

I'm off to Brissy next week for holidays - can anyone suggest good road rides of anywhere between
30 - 100km?

Or better still, are there any regular rides/groups that I could join up with? I'm looking for
people that ride at a good training pace but not like nutter A graders or anything...

TIA,

&roo

Well, I'm back from Brissy now.

I have to say that the number and quality of bike paths there is excellent, although my defacto
parents-in-law who live there say that the paths aren't that popular with commuters as they don't go
anywhere useful.

Rode from The Grange to Redcliffe for brekky and back, that 2km long bridge is great! For those who
don't know it, there is one newer bridge for cars and the old bridge parallel to it is for cyclists
and peds only (with only the bikes allowed to use the centre better-tarmac'ed bit, although plenty
of peds walk on it too, same as bike paths the world over I guess).

Decided to join in the Cycleogical shop ride at 6am on Weds, as advertised in at least three
different places (see the links earlier in this thread). Got to the shop on the dot of 6 (I like my
sleep), there's a paper sign in the window saying "ride now starts at 5:30am" or similar. Great. So
I made up my own ride along the river, on the various bridges and the roads and bike paths on each
bank. These are of mixed quality - some have ped and bike bits separated by a little median strip
(the bike bit is wider), others have planking that rattles as you ride over it (kinda cool noise),
others have 15 km/h speed limits (the so-called Goodwill Bridge has a 10km/h limit that I didn't see
anyone observing). There's also plenty of quiet wide streets where I guess the sprints happen. Ran
into a few dead ends and other boring bits (that wouldn't have happened on the shop ride) but
generally it was good. Got bored of puncturing my (Kevlar) rear tyre though - had about 5. I think
my arms got more tired (from pumping) than my legs. Saw lots of other roadies, inc. a group of at
least 30 - maybe this was the alleged shop ride, but I was in the middle of a puncture at the time
and couldn't join them to find out.

Brissy also has this handy pocket map book for cyclists, available free from all LBSes it seems.
It's a similar format to the (8?) Sydney RTA maps, but bound into a jersey-pocket-sized booklet that
covers all of Brissy - very handy for finding paths or just navigating around (especially if you're
from out of town like I was).

Had a good service experience at Velo Cycles in the Grange - they sold my girlfriend's mum a Trek
hybrid and were helpful and knowledgeable, not pushy or condescending at all. The 20% off helped
too, being a 2003 run-out model.

Had one ride outside Brissy as well - Montville to Maleny and return - 30km, of which I think about
100m was flat! One 12% and two 10% hills each way. Good training, and a tough workout for my
girlfriend on her 16kg hybrid!

Thanks to all for their earlier advice.

&roo