CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
On the way it passes Mt Hyland Nature Reserve, New England National Park and back through Mt Hyland Nature Reserve. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 47 km this is Waterfall Way, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Washpool is one of those places that people drive past without knowing, which is a shame, because it holds some of the most extensive old-growth rainforest in New South Wales. It lies on the rugged escarpment of the Great Dividing Range between Glen Innes and Grafton, a landscape of granite domes, deep gullies and cool, dripping forest that is part of the Gondwana Rainforests World Heritage Area. The trees include coachwood, a tall, smooth-barked species that forms dense canopy, and ancient stands of Antarctic beech on the higher ground, alongside tree ferns and mosses.
Read the complete Washpool National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Washpool National Park is where the day begins. Next is Mt Hyland Nature Reserve.
Ask a New South Wales local about Mt Hyland and you may get a shrug, which is partly the point. The nature reserve occupies high, cool country on the edge of the New England tableland, west of the Dorrigo plateau, in the same belt of mountains that holds the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia. Here the forest changes character as you climb: warm eucalypt forest gives way to tangled rainforest and then to stands of Antarctic beech, gnarled and moss-draped trees whose relatives grow in Patagonia and New Zealand, a leftover from the days when the southern continents were joined.
Read the complete Mt Hyland Nature Reserve write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mt Hyland Nature Reserve comes up about 120 km into the recorded legs. Next is New England National Park.
At Point Lookout, on the edge of the New England tableland in northern New South Wales, the land drops away so suddenly that on a clear morning you seem to be standing on the rim of the world. The escarpment falls more than a kilometre to the Bellinger valley, and on many days a sea of cloud fills the valleys below, with the ridges sticking out like islands. New England National Park protects this edge of the Great Dividing Range, and it is part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, a World Heritage site that preserves forests whose lineage goes back to the time when Australia was part of the supercontinent of Gondwana. Here grow Antarctic beech trees, gnarled and draped with moss, in a cool temperate rainforest that feels more like a fairy tale than Australia.
Read the complete New England National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 167 km into the recorded legs you reach New England National Park. Next is back through Mt Hyland Nature Reserve.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mt Hyland Nature Reserve write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mt Hyland Nature Reserve, late in the day. Next is Washpool National Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Washpool National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Washpool National Park. That is the ride.
Washpool National Park → Mt Hyland Nature Reserve is 120 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Mt Hyland Nature Reserve → New England National Park is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
New England National Park → back through Mt Hyland Nature Reserve is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mt Hyland Nature Reserve → Washpool National Park is 120 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.