Get your climbing legs on if starting this Track from the Castlemaine end, because you are going to spend a fair proportion of the first 15km looking upwards.

A couple of the ascents are long and quite steep, a couple of others are shorter, pinchier, rockier and more technical. There's not a lot single-track but there are plenty of challenges - and plenty of satisfaction in meeting them successfully.

Once up and over Mt Alexander the character of the Track changes dramatically, because now you are following a section of the 70km Coliban water system, which supplies Bendigo with drinking water from the Great Dividing Range.

There's a couple of hefty efforts where the water race goes through hills and you go over them, but the top of the final climb also signals the final run into Bendigo. And for mountain bikers it's a hoot, intermingling single- and double- track with nothing more than a few pinch climbs.

The Track runs virtually all the way to the heart of the city. You will be railing gravel corners one minute, then sitting at the railway station trailhead the next.