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Seek Travel Ride is an adventure travel podcast for anyone curious about travel and looking to bring more adventure into their everyday.
Host Bella Molloy chats with adventurers and everyday people about bicycle touring, cycle touring, bikepacking, long-distance cycling, and other human-powered adventures. You’ll also hear slow travel, cultural discovery and micro-adventure stories that show adventure can happen anywhere.
Expect travel stories, helpful advice and practical tips you can use to shape your own adventures, whether you’re dreaming of world travel, planning your first bike travel journey, or starting small with something close to home.
Remember it doesn't need to be epic to be an Adventure!
Cycling the Australian High Country. Reaching the Horn by Bike
•Bella Molloy•Season 3
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This week I'm sharing some of my own riding adventures - specifically ones I took just a few days ago over Christmas. I was camped by the Ovens River near Bright in Victoria, and I enjoyed some fantastic riding. This included a memorable cycle to The Horn, a lookout located 11kms further on from Mount Buffalo in Victoria. It's a climb I'd dreamt of riding for over a decade, and I'm sharing my experience of that ride now with you.
If you are interested in learning more about the riding around this area of Victoria, check out - Ride High Country, which is a great site for planning out your own stays.
For those in Melbourne get yourself tickets to our upcoming live shows:
Hello everybody, Bella Meloy here, host of Seek Travel Ride. Welcome back to another midweek mini episode where I am fueling your stoke for bike travel adventures. Now, normally during these midweek episodes I get to feature one of you awesome listeners and getting to share where you've been riding, what your adventure was like, and this week I'm doing something a little bit different because I'm actually going to put the spotlight a little bit back on me, the host, and share one of my recent adventures with you. Now, this adventure happened in Australia just a few days ago in the Victorian high country where myself and my husband spent five amazing days camped right next to the Ovens River. Beautiful, beautiful place there in Australia. It's one of the few places in Australia where you can really see our prominent mountains there. And we have climbs which I say can stand right up to some of those big climbs that I would be more used to in Europe. So there's climbs like Mount Hotham, which is you know a 30 kilometer climb, Mount Buffalo, which is 20 kilometres, there's Tawonga Gap. So there's quite a lot of climbing to be done in this area. And to be fair, many years ago, this was the area I used to come time and time again on a holiday when I was with my road bike dressed in full on lycra and racing up climbs to get a really fast time. So I have visited this area many, many times. It always fills me up with energy, it clears my mind, and I love this place to bits. But this was a very different trip. Now I guess if I was to wind the clock back further still, I should actually take you back to when I first visited this area, and that was way back in 2008. I had only just really gotten into riding, I would say, modest distances, and I was riding a mountain bike back then, and a group of I think there was eight of us friends all decided to get together for an adventure riding the Murrays to the Mountains rail trail. So we all visited Bright in Victoria, and it was one of the first areas in Australia that had actually used disused railway lines and turned them into bike trails. I think in the States you might call them rail to trail. In Europe, we might know them as greenways. Well, in Australia they're rail trails, and this area I guess was really rejuvenated from a cycle tourism point of view because they had created this awesome network of rail trails. So we visited this area back in 2008. We had an amazing three days riding the rail trail, which is, as it suggests, pretty flat, pretty straight. This one traced along the road. It's a fantastic area in terms of you've got think of yourself in a river valley, because that is what it is. The ovens river is right along it, but you're sort of in a bowl because when you look left and right, there's these beautiful mountains that scoop up either side of you. There's lots of pine plantations, you can see the prominent rocky outcrop of Mount Buffalo in the distance. And we were just loving life, thinking we were absolute champions because you know we rode our mountain bikes all day. I think the first day we might have ridden 60, 70, or 80 kilometers out to a winery and back. I think the joke made at the end of that day was that the steepest climb we had was to the top of the wine tasting room at the vineyard. And uh I often look at that and just think how far my riding has actually progressed. But then year after year, we would have reasons to come back to this area. So my husband and I would come, we graduated to riding road bikes and did that quite extensively for many years, and so this was a place where you could come in Australia and you could get yourself on a decent climb that would last an hour and a half or two hours or even longer. And that was amazing. It was sort of one of those things where I remember the very first time I had done a climb like that in Australia, and I was sort of taken aback at the fact that this type of terrain existed in this area, and the views at the top were always mega. Then in 2014, I want to say, I was flicking through YouTube videos at night, and I saw an amazing video by an account called North South. I think even back then their YouTube channel might have been called Cycle Atlas or something like that. Anyway, those two people behind that video stayed in the little town of Bright by the Ovens River, and then rode the climb of Mount Buffalo, which we had ridden, which is a road climb which from the base to the summit is about 20 kilometres, averages five percent. So it's a thousand metre climb, it's fairly decent, especially for Australia. But then what they did was they continued on a different road to the top-out point called the Horn. Now this was amazing scenery to me, just the view from there looked absolutely phenomenal, and I think the last three and a half kilometres of that ride was on a dirt road. So in the years that followed, my husband and I we would go to Mount Buffalo, we would actually drive and we went to the lookout at the horn because you drive to this car park, and then I think you have a hundred and fifty meters of elevation on this beautiful hike to get to the very prominent tippy top on this amazing escarpment of rocks, granite big boulder rocks, which just look out and give you three hundred and sixty degree views of the Australian high country. All the big prominent peaks are there, and you have one of the best I would call it natural phenomena, and I think listeners, if I can try and describe it the best, it's if I close my eyes and I want to imagine something natural which just fills me with joy, what it is is you know when you look at a mountain range and you can see a mountain in front of you, and then sort of tucked behind it is in a different shade, another mountain, and then behind that is another mountain and another mountain, and they're all layered and they're different shades. And in Australia, where I've seen this, they're layered and it's like there's different shades of sort of grey blue, and you see the textures of the range. And I remember the best thing I loved about being up at the horn was just you had this endless view that looked like that. So we'd ridden bikes to Mount Buffalo, we've ridden our road bikes on all these lovely climbs, we've done the rail trails, and we'd visited the horn by car, but we'd never actually ridden all the way to the top. Now, Christmas 2019, we again had time in Bright, and we rode to Mount Buffalo, and we actually then rode the sealed road to the very end, which terminates about three and a half kilometres before the horn, but we were on our road bikes, not the right terrain for them to get to the very top, so again didn't get to there by bike. So fast forward to this year and just a few days ago, and we were actually on mountain bikes, and we both sort of turned to each other and thought, wouldn't it be great if we actually finally rode to the horn? And I was thinking, wow, how long, how many years have I actually wanted to do this for? And happy to say we made it happen. So it, listeners, was just phenomenal. I remember both my husband and I were sort of thinking, I wonder what it's going to be like climbing for so long on the mountain bikes, because obviously the gearing's fantastic. You've got gears for days, it nearly feels, but it's a very different sort of prospect when you're climbing on an actual seal road on a mountain bike. You sort of feel like you're in a different sort of position on the bike. It doesn't feel obviously as efficient as what it would on a gravel bike or a road bike. But I was really happy because it felt amazing. And I didn't feel too bad riding it either. I am not the fittest I've ever been. I'm not unfit by any measure, but I'm certainly not as fast as I used to be. But it didn't seem to matter because the best thing about this whole day was being able to ride my bike to a place that I had dreamed about riding to for over a decade. And I remember that feeling where the road, the asphalt terminated and I hit the dirt, and it just felt like I'd finally crossed over into this portal that was unattainable, but I was on the right bike to do it on, and it was just fantastic. It was beautiful blue sky, warm sunshine, it wasn't too hot. In fact, up at that elevation, I think the horn terminates at around sixteen hundred and fifty meters or so, and at that elevation the air had a little bit of a cooling feel to the breeze, which was lovely. And you go through this series of beautiful we call them switchbacks or hair pins, you know, where the road just goes back and forth on itself. And it's climbing gently, uh gently climbing, is that such a term, but uh you're never really too steep. I think the steepest it got was maybe ten or eleven percent, maybe twelve percent in gradient, but you're more likely climbing at a you know a gradient of around eight percent, seven per cent. And I remember rolling to the top, there are a few families there enjoying the view, taking photos at the summit, and at the top of the horn you've got this beautiful sort of it's not really a hut, I guess it's just a lookout, but it's sort of got three sides that are built up, made of, you know, like rock wall, and it's got a beautiful roof, and it's sort of got an open window the way that it's structured, so you can go in there and look through, and I just remember riding up to the lookout, and I rode my bike right inside and looked through the window, and I was just like, wow, I have dreamed about doing this for over a decade, and now I'm here and I got here on a bike. I had the great feeling of a couple of car drivers who were driving down from the lookout, giving me words of encouragement and congratulating me for riding and making me feel good about how hard it was to get there. But it was just such an energizing environment. And listeners, I don't know about you, but I don't know if you've ever been on a bike adventure. And you're on terrain which elevates your heart rate, makes you hot, makes you sweaty, makes you all sorts of things, sometimes makes you question life, but you just look around you and you just think, wow, I got here. I got here on my own, I got here turning these pedals, slowly, slowly, I've made my way, I've climbed all this elevation, and these views are my reward. And on the way to the horn, I mean the horn lookout is spectacular itself. But something that's really unique to me, I haven't seen it anywhere else in Australia, is that whole Mount Buffalo National Park. You get to this point where you sort of reach a high point and it's not treeless, there are still some trees, but there's this massive rocky outcrop. It's a really great area for rock climbers actually who come to this place because there's lots of granite and bouldering and other types of climbing that they can do there. But you've got these beautiful prominent rocks. There's one called I think the cathedral, and there's a hike that you could do to it, but you're sort of riding, and it's just this huge rocky natural structure off to the right, and you're looking up at it and going, Wow, I wonder what happened millions of years ago that created these rocks to be this way. And yeah, riding up to the horn under my own steam was amazing. The other thing was amazing was five nights spent in a tent. I know that camp life isn't for everyone, and I don't know what it is about it, but I just love getting back to basics. Being in a tent, cooking simply, living simply, we had the best spot next to the ovens river, and an even bigger special treat was for three nights in a row we saw platypus in the river. At one stage there were two platypi swimming right opposite us, and they're actually really shy creatures, and it's not a common sight. It's not like you can go to any Australian river and all of a sudden if you just stare at the water for a few minutes, you'll see a platypus. It's not that common. But again, this was just like another little natural gift, and I can't tell you how energizing it was for me at the end of every ride to sort of get back to camp, sit down in my chair, and just look out at the river, looking for platypus or just watching the river flow and the current move through the water. Yeah, there was just something really, really relaxing about it. The other great thing about this area, if there's anyone listening who hasn't been here yet, it's just got fantastic cycling full stop. So you've got the rail trails, which is what brought us to the area in the first place many years ago. Then you've got those amazing long road cycling climbs that, you know, if you if you want to go out on a really long measured mountain climb, you've got those as well. And recently, well I think in the last five or so years, there's a I don't know if it's an organization, but there's a body called Ride High Country, and they have also built a big gravel network of climbs as well. So if you're on a gravel bike or a mountain bike, there's a whole series of climbs from all the towns surrounding Bright. And you can go and choose a whole myriad of different options, so different road surfaces, and then Bright itself also has a mountain bike park called Mystic Mountain Bike Park, so you've got that as well. There's the history of the area, it was all gold mining history, so that's fantastic. If you're into hiking, Mount Buffalo National Park has got amazing hikes to beautiful waterfalls as well, and there's also farm gate stuff, so you can go get yourself some local produce. There's a few breweries in town which are very, very popular. I think we spent every night at Bright Brewery getting some cold refreshments, maybe a bowl of chips or two, and yeah, it's just a fantastic place to be. So that was my five days off over Christmas, by the banks of the Ovens River, on a mountain bike, finally getting to the top of the horn. It was definitely one of my absolute highlights and exactly what I needed for this year. And I guess it's this time of the year where many of us get to, I guess, feeling maybe a little bit low on energy. There's always this big rush to the holidays. Those of you in the northern hemisphere at the moment, it's also cold, the days are shorter, and it feels like things are just taking our energy away. And for me personally, being able to get some time out in nature, stripping it all back to basics, it was exactly the lift that I needed. This is also the time of the year where we reflect on what we've done, what's been happening, and this podcast has just continued to go from strength to strength. All of you amazing super fans out there who listen week in, week out, have made this happen for me, and the stories of the guests that I have shared this year have been absolutely phenomenal. I've had the absolute amazing pleasure and privilege to actually meet many of my guests face to face, of being able to host some of them as well, which has been great to be on the other side of that curve and show back some hospitality. And then, of course, I did my live shows in London, which was mind-blowing. Very exciting for me is in early January. I have two more live shows now set up for Melbourne. So, those of you in Melbourne on the 7th and the 8th of January, I have two live shows. At each of those, I have three amazing guests. They are M. Hulbert, Fergal Guyen, and David McCourt, and we are going to be sharing a night of bike travel stories with those who come. So I've got a link in the show notes if you want to get tickets to that, and if you are in Melbourne and are able to attend, I would love to see you there. But I guess mostly this year's just shown me that the world is a great place. My guests reinforce that to me each and every week. This community is amazing, and the connections I've been able to make within it and connecting other bike travelers to each other has also been an absolute gift. And yeah, this whole last week I've spent reflecting and thinking about that. And I just wanted to share those reflections with you this week. And before I leave you to thoughts of the year ahead, I want to take this time now to thank you, my absolute legends of super fans, who have once again shown your brilliant support for me and the podcast and bought me coffees. Each and every week these coffee donations are coming through, and it really does blow me away. This week I would like to thank Benshaw Permaculture. You have said I'm so appreciative for the regular inspo and wonderful storytelling. This is such a fabulous community. Well, Benshaw Permaculture, thank you for being part of it. Thank you for buying me some coffees, and I agree, this is a brilliant community. And lastly, I have David Voorhees. David, I hope I haven't butchered your surname too much, but you have said, Bella, you are an awesome interviewer. You're always getting the best stories out of your guests. Keep inspiring us, please. Well, David, I will do my very best to take the inspiration over into 2026. Thank you for supporting the podcast and to keep these podcast wheels rolling. And listeners, as I wish you all a fantastic end of the year and a super 2026 may it be filled with many, many bike adventures. I want to say thank you so much. And if you want to do as David Vuheys and Benshore Permaculture have done and support the show, show your love for the podcast, you can head to buymeacoffee.com forward slash seek travel ride. As always, buy me some coffees, but let me know what is it that you are loving about the podcast and where is your next adventure going to take you. And until the next episode, I'm Bella Malloy. Thanks for listening.
