What’s new at Wild Mersey | The tri-town trail network is finally complete


Spanning just about from Devonport Esplanade— where the Spirit of Tasmania docks — most of the way to Mount Roland, The Wild Mersey trail network is finally complete.

Located only about an hour from Launceston, Wild Mersey is a wide-ranging network with nearly 100km of varied trails and what amounts to three trail networks across as many towns. Built on the back of $5.1-million in funding from all tiers of government, if you have visited Wild Mersey since it opened, it’s time to book another trip because there are new places to ride.

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From super flow to rocky rooty goodness, Wild Mersey is a massive and varied network.
Latrobe is on the northernmost end of Wild Mersey and has some lovely views and great cafes. It’s also where you’ll find the only bike shops.

With the network complete, it also marks the realisation of Chris Frankcombe’s dream. Not a mountain biker himself, this project was his baby, and he built the foundation, spearheading the initial master plan. Unfortunately, Frankcombe passed away in 2017 before the first trail was cut.

We reached out to the Frankcombe family to see what Chris would think of Wild Mersey, and they told us, “he would be very proud of what it has become. He’d love to have seen people out there enjoying the wilderness and the number of visitors it has attracted to his hometown.”

Raging rivers and hard yakka

Every trail project is challenging, but the last push to get Wild Mersey over the line has seen the project team battling natural disasters, bureaucratic red tape and the Mersey River itself. It’s also seen new trails, big events and new energy in quiet towns.

Ranging across Latrobe, Railton and Sheffield — and two council areas — from the start, the goal was to have all three towns connected with singletrack. The final puzzle piece was a suspension bridge that crosses the Mersey River, which will be the longest in the southern hemisphere. However, the water was living up to its wild name, having washed away lower lying versions three times since construction started on the trail network.

Because the river knocked out lower versions of this bridge, the suspension bridge is 8m above the surface.

When these apocalyptic storms cleared, they found the previous bridge about 500m downstream pushed up against a bank. To be clear, this bridge is made from steel, so it’s not like it floated down the river.

The bridge has since been rebuilt in a different spot and is on the precipice of opening, forming the final connection between the Warrawee Forest and the Railton Express trail. The river crossing had a bit of a soft opening for the kick-off of the Quad Crown Series, The Wild Penguin, to allow the first stage to cross the river. Fenwick tells us that additional GeoTech and Engineering assessments have been requested for the banks on either side before they can let the general public use it.

According to Fenwick, this process is nearly finished, and will be open by July.

But the river wasn’t the only challenge that needed to be overcome. For the crew from Trailscapes, they were working in extraordinarily difficult terrain.

“You don’t get very far during the day. We were constantly coming up against bedrock, so you’re constantly building retaining walls that you can track over with the machine, which ultimately forms the trail. It was hard going, and it’s difficult to understand; you might ride through a section that takes us three or four days to build, and it will take you a few seconds. You just have no idea, but that’s the way it’s meant to be,” says Garry Patterson from Trailscapes.

Garry and his team were also out there building when the rains came in October. He called the lead-up to that deluge the winter from hell and said they’d never experienced conditions as bad as that before. But, a positive end did come out of this endurance.

The construction of Wild Mersey was…well..wild. From storms and terrible wet weather, the Trailscapes team had to be very conscious of how water runs off of the trails, and where it comes out of the ground after storms. Fortunately, the Latrobe and Kentish Councils have brought on a full-time Trail Maintenance Officer to ensure their efforts were not in vain.

“It’s an absolute credit to all the team to work through that, and come up with solutions to all the problems with running water we were discovering everywhere. Because of that, we’ve basically made it an absolute all-weather trail network. When everywhere else in Tasmania was shutting down because it was too wet, this kept running,” he says.

Even still, the most waterproof trail network will wear out eventually, so the council have brought on a full-time Trail Maintenance officer.

“We’re not relying on the trail builders any more, and we’ve already had reports of people saying how much better some of the trails are looking already. It’s just one guy at the moment, but he has resources at both ends, so he doesn’t have to drag everything all over the countryside,” says Fenwick.

This is possible because the Latrobe and Kentish Council are working in a shared arrangement, as the trail network runs across both.

Fenwick also tells us they are already scheming for stage two, to add more trails. But that’s still some way off, and he wasn’t able to divulge any details yet.

On a number of occasions, the Trailscapes crew came across features they could not move the machines through. So they had to track them down the hill — sometimes 45-degree slopes — and navigate to the other side to keep building.

What’s it like to ride there?

Covering so much ground, there is a lot of variety in the dirt and the terrain the trails cross.

“What I love about it is how unique we’ve been able to make each trail. So it’s not just the same riding style the whole time or the same time of trail. They all constantly evolved and changed, and that’s why when you ask people their favourite trail, you get ten different answers,” says Patterson.

If you ask 10 people what their favourite trail is at Wild Mersey, you’ll get 10 different answers.
Sheffield has some pretty amazing views of the Mount Roland Regional Reserve.

When we asked Patterson his favourite trail at Wild Mersey, his answer was surprising.

“I do love Echidin’ Me, but I still have to say Green Hornet is my favourite. When it was built, green trails were just — no one cared, who wants a green trail? We only had a narrow corridor to build, and we’d just come off building Shred Kelly in Bright, which everyone loves. So we said, let’s just see if we can do a green version of that trail here,” says Patterson.

It’s clear Patterson is extraordinarily proud of this humble green trail just outside of Railton, but it’s more than just because they built a cool descent. It is the access that it has created for folks and the kids in town to get into riding and gain confidence.

“Every new destination we’re seeing has a good green trail like that nowadays,” he says.

Sam Newton, who shot the lovely photos you’re looking at in this piece, sums up the network as Derby without the shuttles.

“If you’re going out for a loop, there are options to go shorter or longer, and the dirt is so friendly and grippy. A beginner rider can go out and have a lot of fun, But, there’s a good amount of options to really test yourself,” he says.

The newest trail in the network, Raptor Ridge, exemplifies this tenor. This 10km adventure loop features a squidge over 400m of climbing and descending on the northernmost ridgeline in the Badgers Range and runs past waterfalls and epic viewpoints.

The high point on Raptor Ridge opens up to a sprawling vista.
Once you come around the end of the ridge line, it’s descending basically all the way back to Railton.

“My mates were both on 160-170mm enduro bikes and were getting everything out of it — gaps, doubles and that kind of thing. They were cruising down and having a blast. I was on a 120mm hardtail —with a trail geometry, not an XC bike — on that trail, I didn’t really find anything holding me back,” he says.

It’s (Wild Mersey) full of super flowy trails. Gnarvana is one in particular while it has some really smooth bits, it had a really good rock garden in it. Same with Echidin’ Me, which was part of the Quad Crown, it has a full-on rock garden in it that the cross-country bikes did a pretty good job to make it through,” says Newton


Check out the action from the first stop of the Quad Crown MTB Series, The Wild Penguin


You may have noticed the heavy use of puns for trail names, Wild Mersey is chock full of wordplay that harkens back to the banter the crew from Trailscapes had during the build.

“We always sit down and write a huge list. It’s sort of the nature of myself and the crew because we like to have a laugh, and we’re always looking to find those unique, cryptic trail names. You’d be out there and see a quoll, and you think, how do you get that into your trail name. Quollafied, that will do it!” he says.

There are also references to the history of the town. Patterson tells us that Skyed Out, a black trail at the top of the network, is named after this mathematical genius that used to live in Railton named Norman Sykes. He was super eccentric and used to ride his bicycle from Railton to Devonport, and when he passed away, he gave his land to the town to be used for a recreational park.

From big adventure trails, to the wooden features on Super Hornet, Wild Mersey checks a lot of boxes.

How to ride Wild Mersey?

With the trail network spanning three towns, Patterson, Newton and Fenwick says the best place to base yourself is Railton.

“From Railton, you could drive up to Latrobe and ride those trails in the morning, or if you’re up for a bigger ride or have an e-Bike, you can follow the Railton Express and go across the bridge,” says Newton. “Railton has some easily pedalable stuff right from town like Super Hornet and Green Hornet; you could easily do Echidin’ Me in an hour or so and ride that in the afternoon. Then that leaves the rest of the Sheffield side for the following day.”

Railton is a quiet little down, in the middle of the network and is the best place to base yourself for a weekend at Wild Mersey.

Patterson says the new Raptor Ridge loop coming from Railton makes a 25-30 km loop that hits some of his favourite descents along the way and is a big fan of riding the Railton Express over to Warrawee.

To help you on your next trip to Wild Mersey, we asked Chris Stredwick from the Cradle Coast Mountain Bike Club for a couple of suggestions on routes to ride Wild Mersey.

Spanning across three towns, it’s hard to know where to start with Wild Mersey. Not to worry, here is how the locals do it.

Railton Beginner loop

For a green loop ideal for beginners, he says you can’t go past Teleport and Green Hornet, just up from the Railton Trailhead.

“Teleport provides a gentle climb up through the bush east of Railton and reaches its highest point after about 90m of climbing, where you point your wheels back down Green Hornet, a super flowy trail that’s great for beginners, but still fun for the more advanced rider if you want to put a few pedals in. Green Hornet returns you to Goliath Park from where you started,” he says

Wild Mersey Medium Loop

For a bigger loop that will take a few hours, he’s put together a 34 km route taking in what he thinks are the best trails in the Badgers Range. You’ll start in Railton and hit trails like Easy Tiger and Woodhooker on your way into the Douglas Firs on Ewoks (think Endor from Star Wars), which finishes in a Beech plantation when you hit Railton Rattler. You climb up the Sheffield side of the network on Up Start, Rock’n Roland and Blue Tongue. At Funky Chicken, you’ve reached the highest point in the network, and it’s all downhill back to town.

The Big ‘un

Stredwick says this isn’t the biggest loop you can do at Wild Mersey, but it’s a great day out, especially if you’re on an e-Bike — just be mindful of your battery. This was the course for stage one of The Wild Penguin, with about 60km and 1300m of climbing.

This is also one that could totally be split into two, taking in the Wareree side as one ride, and riding the Raptor Ridge loop.

For more on Wild Mersey, check out their newly revamped website. 

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