Munda Biddi Trail (WA) - Jinung Beigabup to Denmark

Day 25 of the Munda Biddi Trail, this section takes cyclists from Jinung Beigabup to Denmark. Following the back roads to the tourist drive of Scotsdale Rd, the trail descends to the coast for world class views in William Bay National Park. Following the coastal ridge to the Denmark Community Windfarm, the trail heads into town via Ocean Beach Rd. A nice, (finally) coastal section of the Munda Biddi

Distance: 47.14 km (one way; along official route)

Gradient: Mostly gentle with some moderate climbs and descents. Significant descent at Point Hillier Vista

Quality of Path: Mix of sealed roads, unsealed roads, rail trails and single track

Quality of Signage: Mostly well signed at all trail junctions

Experience Required: Mountain Biking experience recommended

Time: 5-6 Hours

Steps: None, this is a bike trail
Best Time to Visit: All Year; but the South West of WA is always best from August-October
Date(s) Completed: 24th May, 2020 (Jinung Beigabup to South Coast Hwy), 5th December, 2020 (South Coast Hwy to Lights Beach car park), 10th July, 2020 (Lights Beach to Denmark), 26th September, 2020 (South Coast Hwy to Denmark via the Denmark-Nornalup Heritage Trail)

Entry Fee: No
Getting There: No direct access to Jinung Beigabup. Access points are located along the roads through to William Bay National Park, within the park, Lights Beach car park and the roads from the Denmark Community Windfarm through to the Denmark Visitor Centre

Alissa and I woke up well rested and comfortable after our night at Jinung Beigabup. Our glamping plans of packing in a full size car camping tent, inflatable mattress and real pillows had worked a charm. It was so much more comfortable that the heavily compromised ultralight setup we usually use and got the tick of approval; this is how we would be overnighting on the Munda Biddi as we worked our way from Dwellingup south to this point given I still had heaps of the trail to do at that stage. As we packed up and I then waved goodbye to Alissa, I noted that in an odd twist of fate our first overnight experience on the trail was at the very last hut of the Munda Biddi.

From the hut, the Munda Biddi follows some good quality single track, initially passing through more Karri forest that quite rapidly transitions to Jarrah and scrappy heathlands. It is actually amazing how compact an island of Karri the hill top is as while you're up there it looks like you're deep in the Karri forest for as far as the eye can see. 

Near the bottom of the single track descent, the trail transitions to some sandy sections that thankfully didn't last too long and were not that difficult to ride.

Reaching the road at Champion Lane, the Munda Biddi passes farmland, which in spite of the very grey skies still looked very lovely. 

While I never did manage to photograph emus running down the trail, I was able to photograph two kangaroos hopping away as I careened down Champion Lane. If you replace the kangaroos with emus, this is what you would see when you surprise them along the way (though Emus tend to run side by side rather than single file to hide their numbers). 

As Champion Lane continued, it transitioned to sections lined by tall Karris, making for enjoyable scenery along these back roads before turning onto Harewood Rd and the tourist drive of Scotsdale Rd. 

The Munda Biddi follows Scotsdale Rd for about 2.8 kilometres. This is the main tourist drive for the Denmark wine region and goes past Harewood Estate. Harewood is one of our favourite wineries in the Great Southern area, and in fact made the wine we drank the previous night at Jinung Beigabup. Highly recommended if you like Pinot Noir, Riesling and Chardonnay. 

Lined with mature Karri on each side of the road, Scotsdale Rd is a lovely road to drive on, however it is a very winding, narrow road that people travel along at high speed (often in excess of the speed limit), and as such it felt a bit unnerving every time a car drove past. I didn't mind the trail following the road as it is a real quandary as to how the Munda Biddi gets from Jinung Beigabup to the coast (and there are no easy answers), however it would be nice if a bit of cycle trail was constructed next to the road so cyclists were separated from the car traffic. 

After worrying that I'd missed the turn off, the Munda Biddi turns left off Scotsdale Rd as it heads down Freds Rd, which thankfully is a nice and quiet back street. 

As with Champion Lane, Freds Rd provides some rather lovely farmland views across Denmark's rolling hills. Being late Autumn, I was really impressed by how lush and green the Denmark area already was - it truly could stand in for Hobbiton if the Lord of the Rings was made in Australia. 

Over its 3.7 kilometres, Freds Rd is basically a continuous incline that initially starts fairly gently but includes a couple of serious climbs, with a short bump in the middle and a sudden 50 metre elevation gain in 400 metres right near the top.

The climbing work is payment for the next part of the trail. Crossing McLeod Rd and then turning onto the aptly named Point Hillier Vista (Point Hillier can be seen in the distance), the Munda Biddi rapidly loses 120 metres of elevation in 2 kilometres of super fast downhill riding along the sealed road. I wasn't clocking my speed but it would have been up there with one of my fastest speeds of the entire Munda Biddi, and could very well have been faster than the descent Mark clocked us as doing 50 kilometres between Donnybrook and Nala Mia. 

At the end of Point Hillier Vista, the Munda Biddi passes what Mark and I refer to as a Bibbulman shelter, which is an in-joke that came about when we saw an Urbanlist article that measured the Walpole to Denmark leg of the Bibbulmun along the roads rather than using the actual walk trail, and we joked that bus shelters along the way must be the huts. This one was a really rustic model that nevertheless still had an intact window!

From the Bibbulman shelter, the Munda Biddi travels along Limbourne Rd as it heads towards the Denmark-Nornalup Heritage Trail.

The Denmark Nornalup Heritage Trail runs from Nornalup (just east of Walpole) to Denmark and was an old railway line that linked the two towns. Some Munda Biddi cyclists use the trail as a shortcut to skip through to Denmark, and I have to wonder what the reason was that the Munda Biddi didn't use more of the trail given the quality of the riding between Booner Mundak and Jinung Beigabup is not exactly stellar. Whatever the case, the Munda Biddi does join the Heritage Trail briefly, following it for 3.5 kilometres.

 

Parts of the rail trail have been repurposed as a road, and while officially a rail trail the riding initially was not that much of a step up from the road riding that had dominated much of the morning.Things improved further along the trail, with the raised form framed by some lovely Karri forest. 

The Munda Biddi veers off the heritage trail at McLeod Rd and crosses South Coast Hwy. On the other side, a stretch of single track runs west along the highway to head into William Bay National Park. Or at least, that is what is supposed to happen. At this time in May, William Bay was closed due to renewal works and so I rode to the rest stop along the highway with the intention of completing the stretch through William Bay during the weeklong July trip. For numerous reasons, the works in William Bay were delayed multiple times, meaning I didn't get to ride the section before the completion of my End to End. 

While I did get to complete the trail from Lights Beach Road into Denmark, I was disappointed by the gap as I really wanted my last ride of the Munda Biddi End to End to be the grand finale of Denmark to Albany, so in September on the day before my final ride I decided to follow the diversion along the Denmark-Nornalup Heritage Trail on the other side of McLeod Rd. 

The riding is actually better quality than the section of the Heritage Trail used by the Munda Biddi, being a nice narrow rail trail shaded by forest. 

Crossing over the highway, the trail passes between some lovely farmland. With the lovely Spring weather, the landscape looked ready for Windows XP. While the scenery was very much like other parts of the trail and I can see why the trail planners took it a different way at this point, the riding was actually very nice and made me very interested in riding the whole trail in the future. 

The trail's major highlight is an old rail bridge which is unfortunately in a state of disrepair at the moment. Thankfully the trail doesn't just end abruptly here, and there is a diversion that takes the trail down to a temporary bridge across the creek. 

The best thing about this is getting to see the bridge up close. These old wood bridges are really quite amazing structures, and I would love to see it refurbished and reopened along with some of the other rail bridges along the trail that are completely lost to time further west. From the bridge it is a surprisingly short ride into town where Alissa picked me up.

So at this point, the narrative was supposed to jump to me picking up the trail again at Lights Beach as I considered doing the diversion and starting the trail from Lights Beach as more than enough to earn the official sectional End to End after my last day of riding from Denmark to Albany. With William Bay reopened in time for a December trip to Denmark, I decided to complete this last small stretch of the offical trail given it is through one of the best coastal national parks in the South West. Picking the trail up from rest stop on the highway, I followed the narrow and somewhat overgrown trail before it turned onto Privett Rd.

From here, the Munda Biddi takes a couple of back roads past private properties before turning onto William Bay Rd, thus avoiding about 600 metres of highway riding and turning onto William Bay Rd at the main turn off where cars could be coming around the corner at a much faster and more dangerous speed. 

The ride into the national park along the access road is lovely even if it would be nicer if there was an actual formed cycle path alongside the road. On the day of my ride it was a cold and windy day so there weren't many people around, but I can imagine this being a bit unsettling to be cycling along when the tourist masses are racing each other to get one of the coveted parking spots near Greens Pool. 

Speaking of which, it was really interesting to see the finished results of DBCA's improvements to the area. I had one friend who was particularly convinced that the amount of time spent meant the whole park was going to be ruined and overly developed but it turned out she had definitely been catastrophising for nothing; the main works had been to formalise the parking situation so people would no longer be parking wherever they felt like it, and thus reducing the erosion and road edge damage that was a constant problem. Writing this after Christmas and New Years, there was some teething problems in the first weeks of the Summer holidays as people were ignoring common sense and parking on the pavement and in the garden beds, but DBCA have since put up signage to make it clear that you have to park in the marked bays and in the marked bays only. 

Unlike the Bibbulmun Track which has its grand first coastal moment at Mandalay Beach and then becomes a mostly coastal walk from there to Albany, the Munda Biddi is much less coastal and only really has its first, truly ocean views at Greens Pool. Turning into the Greens Pool car park (which was updated but looks to have not been expanded), the overall grey quality of the skies made me skeptical about the quality of the views, however divine good fortune bestowed upon me a spectacular view of Point Hillier and Stanley Island lit by 'God rays'.

Alissa, who had driven into the park to check out the refurbishments and to pick me up at Waterfall Beach, was waiting for me at the lookout and was able to take a rare shot of me along the trail. 

After taking in the views, I continued along William Bay Rd. Before the recent works, William Bay Rd was unsealed after Greens Pool, but is now sealed all the way to Waterfall Beach. Cycling along near the new Elephant Cove car park, I could see the many granite formations of Tower Hill where the Bibbulmun Track's William Bay campsite is located. 

Given most of the tourists really only come here for Greens Pool's safe family-friendly swimming and snorkeling, and for influencers and annoying drone photographers to get their Insta-worthy shot of Elephant Cove, the rest of the road is much less busy and is perfect, mostly clear sailing for cyclists. In the valley just to the left of the road is where the Bibbulmun Track heads as it makes its way to Mt Hallowell, which can be seen in the background. 

Waterfall Beach is located just off the Munda Biddi at the end of the road, and it is well worth checking out if you've not seen it before. Aptly named, it features a small waterfall that flows into the ocean and appears to be spring fed. The soft clay of the short cliffs above the beach unfortunately encourage idiots to tag up the walls, thus ruining the natural beauty of the falls in action. 

Returning to the Munda Biddi as it leaves the sealed road, the trail heads along some very well constructed single track as it makes its way towards Lights Beach. This is a section of trail Alissa and I had walked as part of the William Bay Circuit, a The Long Way's Better original that loops through the best parts of the national park. 

In a lot of ways, the ride from here to Denmark mimics a miniature version of the last 2-3 days of the Bibbulmun Track as it heads into Albany. Rounding the corner as it heads towards Lights Beach, the Denmark Community Windfarm comes into view, and while less spectacular than the iconic Albany Windfarm definitely had a similar character. 

The riding through here is a real pleasure, passing through a mix of Peppermint and coastal Eucalypt thickets as well as more open heathland. 

At one point, the trail runs parallel to a sandy track with an area filled with large granite boulders being visible. These are the massive granite boulders that are seen along the Bibbulmun Track and the William Bay Circuit. Cyclists who don't mind a short side trip can park their bikes up near where the Munda Biddi and the sandy track run right next to each other, cross over to the sandy track and follow the Bibbulmun Track a short distance to the granite formations. Obviously, this is better seen along the Bibbulmun but it is well worth stopping for a side trip if you're not planning on walking the Munda Biddi's sister trail. 

After the granite formations, the trail reaches Lights Beach. In December, Lights Beach onwards was closed due to works being undertaken at this end of the park, so it was most fortunate that I could jump back in time to July when Alissa had dropped me off at the Lights Beach car park to cycle the rest of the way into Denmark. While separated by half a year, the skies were just as moody in July as they would be in December, making quite a good match with my photos of William Bay up to this point!

As with Greens Pool, Lights Beach features a lookout that provides good views of the coastline, however unlike the naturally protected Greens Pool, Lights Beach is a more typically rough Southern Ocean stretch of coastline.

While the single track from Waterfall Beach was already excellent, the section of trail from Lights Beach to the wind turbines makes use of sealed paths along the Wilderness Ocean Walk (WOW) Trail that runs from Lights Beach through to the Denmark Community Wind Farm. 

Continuing with the excellent William Bay scenery but becoming wilder and more ferocious, the coastal views were magnificent. There are sections of the trail which run concurrently with the Bibbulmun Track, however it is good that they didn't dumb down the Bibbulmun Track which has it own wilder, unsealed trail through the dunes.

From a cyclist's perspective, the sealed trail is a perfect outcome as the sandiness would have made it horrid to cycle on all by a fat bike, and I had a lot of fun winding my way along the trail. 

Heading up the dunes, the trail offers good views back towards William Bay, and at the time made me long for the day when the park would be reopened and I could revisit Greens Pool again. 

Even more spectacular were the views of Mt Hallowell and Monkey Rock, which is located along the Hallowell's lower slopes. Hallowell is arguably one of the best parts of the Bibbulmun Track and can be walked as the Sheila Hill Memorial Trail as a day walk. It was great getting to see it from this vantage point and was made all the more special by the golden glow of the Sun's rays. 

Heading further along the trail, Monkey Rock becomes a more prominent feature of Mt Hallowell, here seen quite conspicuously rising out of the Karri forest.

While initially making Mt Hallowell the main feature, the Wilderness Ocean Walk doesn't forget about the wild Southern Ocean, with the trail featuring some fast descents back towards the coast. 

Crossing a car access point, a side trail from the WOW leads towards the secluded Back Beach which doesn't looks like a particularly great spot for a swim, and indeed is reported to have some of the highest energy waves along this wild stretch of coastline. 

From Back Beach, the trail heads back in a more inland direction with the Windfarm being the obvious destination. 

From this inland viewpoint, the Wilson Inlet becomes a dominating feature, with the main settlement of Denmark being visible along its western shores. At this point it definitely feels like the end is very literally in sight. 

But before reaching town, the WOW/Munda Biddi meanders to the top of the headland and to the two wind turbines of the Denmark Community Windfarm. So named as it was a community project (proudly self-described as 'a community response to a local challenge'), it is a truly commendable local initiative with ambitions to be a model for Community Energy Systems throughout the South West. 

With the Wilderness Ocean Walk completed, the Munda Biddi descends rapidly along the windfarm's access road. The cliffs of the Nullaki Peninsula dominate the view, and I was really having a fantastic time speeding downhill. Near the bottom of the descent, I saw a family walking together and veered to the left to give them a wide berth given the speed I was travelling. To my horror, a very cute border collie came bounding out from the bushes and right into my way. I hit the breaks as hard as I could but unfortunately still hit the dog! I felt so horrible and I immediately apologised to the people that I had hit their dog. They were very understanding and knew it was not my fault per se, and were actually more concerned for me. Thankfully the dog seemed unharmed and bounced back fairly quickly. I was glad that it was mainly just a fright for both of us and nothing too serious. 

After the dog crash incident and reaching Ocean Beach Rd, the Munda Biddi follows a dedicated cycle lane along the road as it heads north towards town. 

Again mimicking the ride into Albany along the Bibbulmun, the Munda Biddi heads along the Wilson Inlet, providing some very pleasant, flat cycling along the shore. An interesting feature here is a large sandy island right near the mouth of the inlet that even has a bridge across to it. 

The inlet foreshore becomes dense with paperbarks as it gets closer to town, providing a lot of interesting scenery along the sealed cycle path. At this point I had assumed that the Munda Biddi would take a right and then run up along the Denmark River on the Mokare Heritage Trail, but instead continues up the cycle path along Ocean Beach Rd towards the Denmark Visitor Centre. 

Open at the time of my ride, the Visitor Centre was actually shut completely at the end of July 2020. The insanity of a major tourist town like Denmark not having a Visitor Centre was quite obvious, and it looks like a mooted 'community-based tourism model' had been implemented by January 2021 as the Visitor Centre is now open Wednesday to Sundays 10am-2pm. 

While obviously one of the most jumbled and multiple choice sections of my sectional End to End, Jinung Beigabup to Denmark is quite a good day of the trail, particularly once it turns onto the Denmark-Nornalup Heritage Trail. The coastal scenery through William Bay National Park is truly world class, and while it may be the only day of the Munda Biddi that really engages with the Southern Ocean in a meaningful way, it does it brilliantly. The alternate Denmark-Nornalup Heritage Trail route into town is no slouch either, and I reckon an excellent day ride option would be to ride out on the Denmark-Nornalup Heritage Trail to McLeod Rd and to then ride along the coast back into town. 

Having ridden the Denmark-Nornalup Heritage Trail into the visitor's centre in September and with William Bay still closed at the time, I now only had one more day of riding to tackle - the epic 74 kilometre home stretch ride to the Southern Terminus in Albany.