Triking Across Tasmania

Have you ever had a burning desire to know what it’s like to ride your human powered recumbent tricycle across Tasmania? If so, today’s your lucky day because you can begin the journey right now, vicariously of course, but exciting nonetheless. You see, a trike nomad named Randall Treloyn is pedaling his Greenspeed GTO in many fascinating locales, and, like me, he loves to share his travels with our cozy group of three wheelers. Randall has been triking since 2009, same year I began by the way, and is filling his blog up with text and photographs that will whisk you away into another world. He is running the Arkel RT-60 pannier system, which matches his yellow trike – best for visibility! Now all he needs is a pair of Radical Design side seat pods with yellow inserts to fill the triangular space behind his seat. You can click on any photo on his blog to view an enlarged version.

Visit his website by clicking HERE

Here are some excerpts from Randall’s journey:

For those not familiar with the Lakes Highway in Tasmania is that it is a highway in name only, it is definitely not the preferred route for most traffic between major centres. The majority of traffic here is trout fishermen that have shacks scattered amongst the many lakes in the central highlands.

Overnight it was damn cold, I had gone to bed fairly early as most of the other campers had already gone to bed to keep warm. Being in a valley the sun wouldn’t be up for quite some time. My tent was wet from the frost, but I packed it up anyway and I was on the road by 7:30. By the time I had climbed the steep grade from the caravan park to the highway I was already hot.

The next stage of the journey was a hard uphill slog. Adding to this was the large amount of roadkill on the side of the road at one stage there was a dead animal every 3m for a 100m. Mostly wallabies and possums but quite a few young tassie devils and couple of quolls. Being on a trike close to the ground, pedalling uphill at 2km/h, you just can’t get away from the stench.

At the bottom of the hill the road is still dirt, but the surface is much smoother. They seem to have recently laid a new strip in the middle of the road and I found that the trike fitted in the channel between this and the mound of soft fine dust on the outside. The gentle grades made the dirt road almost pleasant to ride on.

I took up the offer when a couple of locals offered me a beer at Brandum Bay on the edge of the Great lake. After this rest and refreshment I continued along the edge of the lake. As I passed through Liaweenee, a place that often records the lowest temperatures in Tasmania, the sun was beginning to set.

Distance travelled today 52km – (Trip distance 131km)

Randall Treloyn, Tasmanian Triker, on his Greenspeed GTO

Ahh, no automobile traffic!

Visit Randall’s trike journey website by clicking HERE