The days are rapidly getting shorter and the hours of reliable daylight after work are over. As such, my weekday rides had become fewer and shorter, but this day I decided to ride to the mid-valley lookout in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve (LSCR) even though I knew I couldn’t complete the ride in daylight.
I’ve written about the LSCR, otherwise known as Seymour valley, numerous times. It’s accessed via Fisherman’s trail pictured above, which starts a 10km ride from my door. The trail to mid-valley is about 6km, closely following the Seymour river.
I wanted to see the state of the autumn colours in the forest, and for the first 2 or so km, there wasn’t much to report except the odd vine maple visible off the trail. The yards I passed to get to the trail were full of non-native cultivars bred for their beauty and these were regularly in bright autumn colours, but our native forests were largely still in business-as-usual shades of green.
That is, until I rounded a corner to this scene! A cluster of big leaf maples made my trip feel worthwhile already.
The trail is mostly double track as shown below, though there are a few sections of singletrack with a bit more technicality.
I arrived at the mid-valley lookout about 30 or 40 minutes before sunset, but the sun had mostly passed over the mountains at this point. I watched the sunlight creep up the mountainside on the other side of the valley, and the clouds start to turn pink and orange.
I spent some more time watching the light slowly fade before I figured I should make some progress out before the light fails entirely. I wanted a little bit of night riding, but preferably not the whole way.
Racing the light.. well not really racing at all.
I was down to the last kilometre or so by the time it was properly dark. Once I was out of the trees, I was treated to purple-blue clouds left over from the sunset.
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