Beechworth to Everton

“Thrill Ride”

After completing the ride to Linton, the cars were pointed towards Victoria’s north eastern hight country and with bikes attached, headed for the town of Beechworth. The plan was to have a quick look at the the trail at Tallangatta, however a spot of gunzelling enroute at a small tram museum at Haddon had us running too late for that.

Last year, I rode the trail from Wangaratta to Bright, and noticed that there was a branch up to Beechworth which split off just past Everton. As much as I wanted to visit the town and ride the trail, the near constant 1 in 30 uphill grade intimidated me somewhat. So during the intervening year, the means were plotted whereby the trail could be explored in the down hill direction. Enroute, one of the cars was left at the Everton pub, to provide a means of recovering the vehicle with the bikes that was to complete the journey up the hill to Beechworth.

The railway arrived in Beechworth in 1876, and closed 100 years later in 1976, although it lost its passenger service back in 1953. Between 1891 and 1954, the line continued beyond Beechworth to Yackandandah.

Now, this ride was fun. It was actually thrilling belting down the hill at almost insane speeds. After an initial climb out of the station, the track points down hill and you seem to have covered the 16 km before you know it.

The trail is fully sealed, with a couple of interesting road overbridges, long sections of cuttings and a couple of embankments. The track is well signed, and road crossing points are well marked. However most of these features are merely blurs as you race down the hill. There may have been an intermediate station, but I don’t recall seeing it on the way down. I would have loved to have done gone back for a second go, but the though of riding back up the hill is still daunting, and there were other parts of the state we had to get to.

The scenery in that part of the world is worth the trip on its own, and then there was the lovely beer in the pub at Beechworth… but there is another blog for that story.

There is a ‘Sporty Pal’ track map at this link, which gives you some stats, as well as speed and altitude graphs. A google map is embedded below the gallery. Clicking the markers on the map will give you an idea of the locations some of the photos were taken from, and the end marker has the stats – I only just discovered this feature!