Jells Park and back
It’s been another mostly uneventful week. I have kept up the riding, bringing the total to 130km in the last fortnight. Though the best day of riding was Monday, where I did 45km to Jells Park and back, along with Daniel, a mate from my last TAFE course.
We set out from Box Hill at approximately midday, heading east along the creek to Blackburn Lake. After leaving the Blackburn Lake Sanctuary we mostly cut through side streets to get through Nunawading and Mitchem and then onto Heatherdale Road (which amazingly has bike lanes on it). We then headed south, joining Dandenong Creek in Vermont, which takes you through Koomba Park, a regional park which somewhat resembles the Yarra Flats park near Heidelberg. We then went along a track behind the Whitehorse Recycling and Waste centre where we stopped at a fairly unusual looking lookout tower, although most of the view was obscured by trees. We then continued along Dandenong Creek to Shepherds Bush.
The bird life around Shepherds Bush (and probably all along Dandenong Creek) was truly amazing. As we came in past the sporting ovals there was a large flock of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and I also spotted Galahs, Willie Wagtails, Blue Wrens, Rosellas and many other species.
Arriving at Jells Park some time after 1pm having riden over 20km, we rode around the lake (where there were also Pelicans and other wetland birds), before stopping for lunch at the restaurant. While waiting for lunch I used the WiFi feature in my new phone to check up on the weather as it was one of those days where it just seemed like it wanted to rain. Though after looking at the radar we were satisfied that any showers that were around would be insignificant. As it turns out we didn’t get hit by any rain at all.
After lunch (approx 2:30pm) we had another 20km of riding to do in order to return to Box Hill. We left Jells Park through Wheelers Hill, following the Scotchmans Creek trail. Although at this point it is more of a bike route with no remote possibility of any creek nearby with the number of hills we had to climb. There were some moderately steep climbs in there as well through the Wheelers Hill area (hence the name I suppose). The route through the side streets, however, was very well sign posted; until we got to a new housing development near the Monash Freeway that is, requiring use of the Melway to get to the start of the actual Scotchmans Creek trail.
We then only followed the creek for just over a kilometre before turning off at Valley Reserve. We then cut through Mount Waverley, stopping briefly at a small park between High Street Road and Highbury. We then crossed over Highbury Road before hitting the backstreets of Bennettswood then across Burwood Highway before taking a short path towards Station Street. We took a few more back streets through Box Hill South and we were finally home (sometime after 4pm).
We had just completed 45km (averaging 16.4km per an hour; not including any stopping time), without riding on a single main road, riding all the way from Box Hill to Wheelers Hill and back in a loop, all along side streets and bike paths.
Edit: I’ve made a map of the route we did that is now available through Bikely (excluding some diversions where we got lost, etc).