50 shades of Beige

Evans Head with Ballina 30km away on the horizon

In the sleepy seaside coastal town of Evans Head there is an unbroken 30km stretch of beach-front stretching all the way to South Ballina, the surf is sub-standard most of the time I’ve been there and if you don’t like fishing, then there’s not all that much to do while you’re there.

Using social media, I put a call out for a FatBike as I knew a few people who have one or a few laying about. Kedan from Bike Bag Dude gave me a call and told me he had a Muru Witjara I could borrow, 20″ frame, 4.7″ tyres, 1×10 drivetrain and the frame is crafted from some fine titanium tubing. This was an offer I couldn’t refuse as I had never spent much time on a fatty.

What type of rock garden is this?

I had alway been a bit dubious of the fatties thinking they were pretty much out of place, especially for my riding style, Boy! Was I wrong, It’s been a long time since I had been really looking forward to jumping on a bike to see what it can do.

First off there were the quick 200 meters or so of road to the beach, at first the pressures felt way to soft which left me bouncing like a pogo stick down the road thinking I was going to pinchflat way before I hit the soft stuff. The steering felt slow and unresponsive, but I was comparing this to my silly light XC machine with 2.1″ tyres front and rear.

The road onto the sand is very soft and broken up by the four-wheel-drives that use it to get to their favourite beach worming spots.(yep, getting to the best beach worming spots is a high priority for some up here.)

A different type of rut

The huge tyres kept you above this soft stuff and made you feel like you were almost floating on air, then, as you moved towards the water line you hit some of the firmer sand letting you get up to a decent speed. The grip the big tyres gave you was phenonemal, as long as you didn’t try to make a hairpin turn to quickly. The bike was starting to come alive, twisting and turning to get comfortable with the steering only took a matter of minutes.

One of my initial thoughts was that this was going to be one bike which would be hard to get up to speed, this was not the case, sure you’re not going to do a time trial on it but you can sit on 25/kmh without grunting too loud, infact with a decent tail wind I did manage to run out of gears.

Singletrack of a different kind

Sand is deceiving, if the Eskimos have 17 words for snow, I know I have a few choice words for sand…

One minute your hooning along on what is almost as hardpacked as a bitumen road, the next minute you could find yourself frantically shifting up as you try pedalling out of what seems to be quicksand and then straight back onto some of the nicer hard stuff. This all depended on the what time the tide went down.

Those who have ridden the Simpson desert will know what I mean when it comes to choosing your line.

Averaging approx 25/kph you could jump the slight undulations and use some of the bigger dunes as massive berms.

Even more coastal singletrack fun

Along the beach there were plenty of access points for camping sites to allow 4WD’s entry to the beachfront. Upon a bit of exploration I found some some coastal fireroads on the other side of the dunes. Having this bike on hand my sense of adventure had widened and I decided to have a bit of a look-see as tho where these trails went, I couldn’t really get lost as the beach was on one side and the main road into town was on the other. Onwards I travelled and wasnt left dissappointed, I managed to find a good stretch 10km of sandy doubletrack which, if you stayed on the one side all the time became flowy singletrack, the bike handled this with ease, you just had to remember how relaxed the steering was and pre-empt the cornering, exposed roots were bounced over, braking ruts became a pumptrack with the odd jump thrown in for good measure.

Lookout!…sheesh.

At the end of the day, I had the most unexpected fun and ended up in the strangest places, if i could justify one I’d grab one, if only for that one week of the year to work off the XMAS festivities.

Beg, borrow or cry to try one, you just might like it… It will change your holiday plans for sure.

I think Pink floyd turned up to do their latest album cover shoot