Almost two dozen people came out to Lilydale this morning to enjoy some great winter riding weather. 

It was great to see people such as Scott on a Husqvarna this time, David came over from Williamstown, Henk and Don joined us for their first ride with the Ulysses Club and we also had Michael and Peter who often ride with another branch plus Paul who also rides with Whittlesea Branch.  Shamus came along with “Dad” too.

Also good to see Steve back after a longish absence.

Hopefully, we might recruit a new Ulysses member or two (Andrew was also active recruiting another rider at Noojee) and it was a good example of the fact we’re Ulysseans and not just locked into single branches.

Introductions and the briefing took a bit longer than usual and then we rode off with Ian Taylor doing TEC duty.  We left the highway after just one traffic light, explored some Yarra Valley orchard and farm country through to Seville for a bit of highway and then more back roads through to Gladysdale and generally managed to avoid traffic despite it being a long weekend.  The road surface through to Noojee was a bit damp and was given the respect needed while we still got along at a reasonable clip. 

After a chat and rest we rode on towards Mt Baw Baw on good roads and then turned south towards Fumina.   Recent rains and tree “litter” had us being careful as we rode down through Hill End

to Willow Grove and on.  After that the roads opened up and provided much better vision.

We arrived at Rosedale

for lunch and enjoyed a good break, chat, feed and rest.  As the ride was a bit longer than normal, we then had to set off again and Ian Smalley took on TEC duty.  We rode south towards Gormandale and used backroads via Churchill and Thorpdale

before joining the Monash Freeway just west of Trafalgar.  Several of us returned home via the Dandenong Ranges and hints of darkness were making themselves known as we approached Emerald.  I got home with just on 400km on the odometer for the day.             

I had a thoroughly enjoyable day.  Thanks to all who came along and made the camaraderie so great.

Cheers John Cook.