It’s that time of year for the Melbourne Formula One Grand Prix circuit is setup ready for the four day racing event.

I just got back from a long weekend in Melbourne, where I took the rare opportunity to ride my brother’s mountain bike around the Formula One street circuit. Rare, not because I got my brother’s bike rideable again, but because its only about one week each year when you can still drive, ride, skate or walk around the actual race circuit with most of the barriers and infrastructure in place. For a brief moment you actually get to experience what it would be like to be one of the Formula One racing drivers going around the track. Even if it is about 200-300 kph slower riding a mountain bike.

On a bike you also can ride around the complete track whereas motorists can only drive around half of the track.

So it makes it safe for families with children to ride or skate around the track. But it’s wise to be extra careful in the areas of the track where motorists are allowed.

It was interesteing to see the pitt straight area restricted to one lane one way traffic with a 20kph speed limit. They’re taking no chances with any rev heads getting carried away.

I initially had no idea what that humming noise was that woke me up. I thought it was machinery or a truck in the service station behind the hotel. The internal fire alarm wasn’t ringing like the one in front of the hotel. But I knew what the alarm was for when I saw two fire engines turn up in about 10 minutes after it started.

I did smell smoke but discovered it came from on of the firemen who had attended another fire earlier that evening. Phew!

Well it ended up being a false alarm. Maybe on of the guests decided to have an early morning cigarette even though its a non smoking hotel.

Anyway its one way to get me started early so I could spend more time riding Perth’s beautiful bike trails. Have you ever had an unexpected wake up call where you stayed?

So I came up with a great solution. 

I upgraded my hosting plan which meant that my web host had to transfer about a dozen sites I own onto a new faster server. So that you can see all the bike trail reviews, maps, photos and video content without any long delays. In this broadband age we don’t want to see slow loading sites anymore, don’t we? Well I certainly don’t.

That’s why there has been a delay in getting all the bike trail review material online. There were also a few issues when changing servers that caused some of my Australian web sites to go offline for a short period. Hopefully you weren’t visiting then and wondered where we went. Especially so soon after launching.

Now that we’re back online, all the material I gathered from riding bike trails in six capital cities over the last three months will appear here shortly. The reviews will have lots of great information, maps and photos. So you will know exactly what to expect when you head out on your bike. And hopefully this site will also help you from getting lost. Believe me, I took quite a few wrong turns navigating some bike tracks. Even though they were supposed to be sign posted.

Please bookmark and visit BikingTrails.com.au again as those fantastic bike trail reviews will be here at the start of Spring (that’s Spring in Australia).

Please let me know which bike trails you would like reviewed, or which cities or towns you would like to see included, by adding a comment below.

Cyclists on a popular Sydney bike trail are being targeted by speed laser guns in an effort to encourage them to keep at reasonable speeds.

I headed over to Sydney recently to review a few more bike trails. Spent a few days riding around Circular Quay to The Domain, Centennial Park and Olympic Park. And it was at the large circular track at Centennial Park where I saw laser speed guns being used on motorists and cyclists.

However to everyone’s relief the laser guns were not being manned by police. Instead they were attached to those large electronic roadwork signs telling oncoming motorists and cylists what speed they were doing. The speed limit for both road users is 30kph. So if a cyclist is riding over 30kph the sign would flash a large SLOW DOWN message. But you were thanked if you kept at or below the speed limit.

On a bike you really get to see how fast you are going. 30kph may seem really slow in a car but on a bike its a good fast ride. However in that wide bike track at Centennial Park I saw some of those cyclists speeding over the limit. Boy, some of those guys can push their bikes hard and fast. I just managed to make it to 30kph on my hire bike. But mind you I did get up at 4:30am that morning to catch the red eye flight from Adelaide to Sydney.

You’ll get to see lots more pics of the Centennial Park bike track and the other two bike tracks I reviewed. Look out for the new reviews coming soon under Sydney in the Reviews section.