Exploring Nightcap National Park

I've decided that whenever I take a holiday I am going to include a ride on my list of things to do. I recently found myself in Byron Bay for a 5 day yoga retreat and fortunately had googled "Byron Bay mountain bike riding' before I left home so I knew there was a company that offered tours in the area. I gave them a call when I got to Byron and found out that they had a ride going the next morning at 8.00am. Seeing that yoga had been starting at 6.30am I was ready and waiting when my guide arrvied to pick me up. It turned out that my guide, Braden, was also the owner of the business. He was a Kiwi who came over to Aus for a while and hasnt left. He asked for a job at the tour company and the owner sold him the business. He is a very fit, easy going and a good guide. We headed into town and picked up the other customers who were two guys from Sydney who had very little riding experience.

We headed out of town and up into the hills above Byron and made our way towards the Nightcap National Park. On the way up we had to do our good deed for the day and jump start a car load of young hippies whose old falcon had called it a day. We had them going again in  a few minutes but nearly undid all our good work when our bike trailer nearly took the back door off their car. Oh well, would have served them right for not having a Kombi.

The park is situated about 40 minutes inland from Byron between Murwillumbah to the north-east and Lismore to the south. It encompasses 8,145 hectares of the Nightcap Range and adjoins Whian Whian State Forest. Spectacular features such as waterfalls play an important part in shaping the natural environment. The precipitous drop of Minyon Falls is the dramatic result of thousands of years of erosion and was the starting point for our ride.

We were riding Norco hardtails which were in pretty good condition but I only had sandshoes on and the bike had flat pedals so it was back to the old days before clipless pedals as we headed up into the

Rain Forest. We travelled on a mixture of fire roads that the general public arent allowed to drive on and some neat single track. Unfortunatley it had been raining a lot in recent days so the tracks were very wet, especially on the single track sections. On the positive side the creeks were all running strongly which added to the serenity of the place. We made our way up to one of the creeks that provide the Byron water supply and had morning tea. Then we followed a few more tracks, including one nasty climb back to the top of the water fall but on the other side. We used some well placed stepping stones to get across and enjoyed a healthy lunch.

From here we made a fast decent down a  dirt fire road which joined back onto the main road and brought us out at near Repentance Creek.

I would recommend this ride to anyone holidaying in the Byron area. I would love to come back one time and do the 3 Parks in 3 days ride.