This is a retrospective write-up of a ride that I’ve been hoarding since September 2024.
I feel really lucky to live very close to arguably South East Queensland’s two best mountain bike parks – Bunyaville Conservation Park and Gap Creek Rd Reserve and I certainly try to make the most of them. But even in this most fortunate situation, every now and again I crave to break out and try something different. So, after consulting a well known online mapping application and a couple of other resources, I decided that the Bayview Conservation Park at Redlands should be a place that my mountain bike and I would enjoy.
Being very much a ride-from-the-front-door kind of guy, I was a little put off by the need to drive my bike there but the public transport options were fairly scant to this destination so it was in with the towbar mounted bike rack and on with the mountain bike. Although frequent readers of this website know that I’m not a big fan of driving, I have to say that the trip out to Redlands past Mt Cotton was not entirely unpleasant.
On the drive there, I was reminded of several years prior when I would make my way out this way with my road bike to ride the Redlands Classic – a fun little sportive that would take in parts of the bay and the hinterland around Mt Cotton on some of the best semi-rural roads for riding bikes that I can remember. Sadly, the Redlands Classic has gone the way of the Dodo since then but the roads remain in the same condition attracting several groups of roadies on their morning ride.
After a small amount of way finding, I arrived in the Bayview carpark with seemingly not many other takers on this fine morning. Soon I had my mountain bike unloaded and all my standard faffing completed so I was off on my first trail of the day. The Wolf Peach single track starts of with a medium gradient climb before descending into more singletrack on the opposite side of the rise and offering some really fun little switchbacks and small obstacles.
Linking into Vegemite and Chicken Pump I found myself somewhere around the middle of the park where I decided to try You’re Kidding, Birdcage and Pick Up Sticks which were all fairly flat, flowing single tracks that I could really get some speed on. Those linked up nicely with a couple of the Sock Puppet trails which offered more similar terrain before I started climbing somewhere around the centre of the park again to get up to the much touted Sorceress trail. Sorceress was a lot more like the trails I was used to at Bunya and Gap Creek with its steeper gradients, berms and generally faster riding. The view to the Gold Coast from the top of the climb at the beginning of the trail is also worth a look.
Next, I explored some of the more minor trails at the Southern end of the park offering more fun twists, turns and small obstacles before heading back to the carpark for some well earned snacks and coffee that I had packed for the trip.
Overall, Bayview Conservation Park is a great morning out and I will be back again but, if you decide to do the same, don’t expect the same jumps, drops and berms that you’ll find at Bunyaville or Gap Creek Rd. This is decidedly a XC park where it’s predominantly speed rather than air time which can be a good change of scenery and good chance to improve the cardio fitness if you’ve been missing out on the longer miles with your riding.
Ride safe and see you out there sometime.