Australian Cycling Forums - Bicycles Network Australia

Greetings,

Me and some mates are planning to ride from Melbourne to Cowes. None of us has done it before, so if anyone would share their experience or 'safe route', that will be awesome.

Cheers, take care!


Ben

Ride to Flinders St. Train to Frankston, train to Stony Point. Ferry to Cowes

Seriously, save yourself the grief and boredom of that road to Phillip Island. It is full of lots of high speed traffic and, despite all the upgrades, still not a safe environment for cycling. There is really not any easy alternate route. You could ride all the way to Stony Point then take the ferry I guess, but again, choice of road is important.

il padrone wrote:Ride to Flinders St. Train to Frankston, train to Stony Point. Ferry to Cowes

Seriously, save yourself the grief and boredom of that road to Phillip Island. It is full of lots of high speed traffic and, despite all the upgrades, still not a safe environment for cycling. There is really not any easy alternate route. You could ride all the way to Stony Point then take the ferry I guess, but again, choice of road is important.

LOL...

Thanks for the update... will pass your message to the boys...

The other option might be to catch the Met train to Pakenham then ride this route via Drouin, Poowong, Loch , Dalyston, the Bass Coast Railtrail and San Remo to Cowes. 142 kms and mostly fairly quiet roads. It could be shortened to about 107kms by taking the country train to Drouin instead.

The railtrail section is about 15kms and gravel, but a pretty good surface.

My immediate thought, having not ridden there but having driven recently, was that you'd want to go inland to avoid that godawful slog across the swamps at the head of Westernport Bay (across via Tooradin to Lang Lang). Maybe via Packenham would be better.

Then I remembered the crappy roads south from Lang Lang to San Remo.

I'm now tending to side with Pete. Ride somewhere different instead.

tim

My other suggestions both still get them to Cowes, their chosen destination. Just by different routes.

I'm with Il Padrone. I carefully investigated various routes a few months then came to the conclusion that train and ferry would be best. Spending all day riding from Melbourne to Cowes would be like spending all day playing the bagpipes - complete waste of time.

ausrandoman wrote:I'm with Il Padrone. I carefully investigated various routes a few months then came to the conclusion that train and ferry would be best. Spending all day riding from Melbourne to Cowes would be like spending all day playing the bagpipes - complete waste of time.

Thanks for all the precious inputs.... Will pass on to the boys...

Via Drouin or Warragul would be the pick - some nice hills and fairly quiet roads which are often traversed by cyclists, thus, local drivers know to look out for them.

cheers

If doing the Stony Point ferry, get off at Hastings and ride the Bittern Coastal Wetlands Boardwalk and maybe the sandy 'Esplanade' through to SP - probably no good for skinny tyres

Philip Island now has a great array off off-road bike paths linking up to a lot of the nature reserves and other attractions - at least out of Cowes, anyway

macca33 wrote:Via Drouin or Warragul would be the pick - some nice hills and fairly quiet roads which are often traversed by cyclists, thus, local drivers know to look out for them.

cheers

I'm with macca, head to the hills!