Incidental Cycle Touring

in·ci·den·tal/ˌinsiˈdentl/ Accompanying but not a major part of something: “incidental expenses”.

Yesterday we decided that we wanted to see the Glasshouse Mountains, which are located in the hinterlands of the Sunshine Coast. Getting there from Brisbane is amazingly easy, it simply requires catching a train from central Brisbane and you are there in about an hour. Plus you can use your goCard so you don’t even have to buy a ticket while running late for the train! So off we went with our bikes and explored the southern parts of the mountains for the day travelling a comfortable 29km in around 4hours.

After arriving at the lovely town of Caboolture we rapidly made our way north towards the mountains proper. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, the Glasshouse Mountains are a series of 16 volcanic columns (depending on the source, but really how hard is it to count mountains), that were once the cores of volcanoes that have long since weathered away. What makes riding through this area so great is that the roads surrounding these mountains are virtually flat until you get to the base of the mountain.

The Glasshouse Mountains from the road into Beerburrum

We rode for 17km before stopping in Beerburrum for one of the most delicious frozen cokes that has ever been frozen! Following this most cooling of beverages we kept riding north along a most entertaining cycle way. The local council had had the brilliant idea of using the railway service track as a cycle way which was great fun because of the slightly rough surface and nice little bends and hills.

This was the bike path between Beerburrum and Glass House Mountains, it was a lot of fun and also kept us off Steve Irwin Drive

We eventually made it to the town of Glass House Mountains were a quick visit to the information centre told us how to get back on track (we’d take a wrong turn about 20km earlier as it turned out and had been having too much fun to notice!) A little way out of town was Mt Ngungun where we had lunch before heading up the mountain to check out the sights.

A smooth civilised track gave us false hopes about how easy it would be to climb the mountain, we soon realised that to get to the top would require ascending a rocky slope between two large outcops of granite. The climb was well worth it and we spent a good hour or more surveying the landscape and trying to work out which mountain was which before climbing down and heading home.