Tiddlers Tour 2026

Riding small capacity machines over long country roads holds a special set of challenges, but a lack of fun is most certainly not one of them.

In essence with a small machine it’s rider and capacity against the elements, hills, road surfaces and distances.  A regular touring bike at normal road speeds is operating well below its design envelope, a tiddler machine otherwise is operating at the very limit of its design criteria placing a far greater emphasis on the skill of the rider.

Reading the road and conditions ahead and accommodating them become the very essence of the ride, holding revs, selecting gear change points, finding your hill attack speed and maintaining cornering momentum all become crucial to efficient forward progress and there in lies the joy of tiddler touring.

As with the 2025 tour we decided to keep the daily length to around 250km, which may not sound a lot but when you’re concentrating 100% on every aspect of the ride that distance is well and truly enough to leave any rider wrung out by days end.

It’s worth noting we have changed the name of the tour in 2026 to “Tiddlers n Timers” because we are also allowing older and much slower larger machines to join the fun and fray, in other words, bikes that are truly happy at the tours nominated 80-90km speed limit.

Day one of our 2026 route took us from Goulburn to Oberon via Crookwell, Laggan, Golspie, Taralga and Wombeyan caves and included roughly 45km of dirt riding, yes our Tiddlers are not afraid of the dirty stuff.  

Lunch was bought at Taralga and then consumed at the caves, road works being done on the caves road with what looks like a 6km section of the road being prepared to be tarred added to the challenge.  On the way down into the valley the road was very loose gravel with a large hump in the middle but luckily on return the grader had completed it’s magic making the trip up the mountain far more pleasant. Once this section is finished there will still be a few kilometres of dirt left but the road will generally be far safer.

The road from the turnoff to Wombeyan Caves through to Black Springs and onto Oberon is famously windingly wonderful and we had perfect weather to add to the enjoyment.  The decent to the river was a pure hoot and of course the climb out of the Abercrombie is as steep and challenging as ever for smaller machines. The terrain opens up and flattens a lot as you get closer to Black Springs and traditionally the temperature drops as you’d expect for a community that sits at over 1300m above sea level.

The 24kms or so from Black Springs are particularly scenic and the view to the right over Lake Oberon is picture perfect in several places.  

The Big Trout Motel in Oberon was our stop for the night, with several riders taking the opportunity to wash the dust from their bikes before having a beer.

The Royal Hotel was our dinner stop and the general opinion was the food was tasty and well priced, definitely worth a return visit.

Tuesday morning saw us heading towards Portland via several back roads, all were tarred and highly scenic with numerous winding and hilly sections thrown in for good measure.  Oddly despite the weather forecast promising moderate temps and glorious sunshine we were greeted with chilly conditions and murky skies meaning most of us were somewhat underdressed for the morning.

Fortunately we found a nice warm coffee shop in Portland to thaw the bones and heat our cores and most of us took on some extra insulation before climbing back onto our bikes to roll out of town towards Capertee.

Keeping away from main highways is a prime consideration for the TnT tours and the 18km section between Cullen Bullen and Capertee on the Castlereagh Highway was one of the very few Highway sections we traversed, luckily the traffic was light and we didn’t really impede anyones progress.

From Capertree we headed downhill towards Glen Davis, this road offered stunning views of cliffs that seem to fill at least 180 degrees of your view, and by this stage the clouds had cleared, the temperatures climbed and we had found ourselves effortlessly cruising along quite well surfaced roads.

At the Glen Davis turnoff we headed north towards Glen Alice, the road running parallel to the cliffs on our right, the terrain now became rolling hills and short straights eventually opening up to flat farming land around Camp Flat Locality, from here we headed almost due north until turning at Dabee Road that took us into Kandos.  

A note on Dabee Road, it’s very deceptive, it looks like it’s relatively smooth and pothole free but the surface is incredibly rough and everyone agreed on pulling up in Kandos that it was easily the roughest section we’d so far covered on the tour, thankfully it was only a few kilometres long.

The Kandos Hotel provided a very cheap lunch, at least if you chose the Chicken Schnitty, and a few members took the chance to wander around town.  Meanwhile back at the bikes Ricky O’Leary had struck up a conversation with a curious local envious of his historic Honda XL500.  This was a pattern repeated throughout the tour, we all decided we must be riding the wrong bikes, it seems everyone we met has a story to tell about owning an old Honda XL!  Eventually we had to pry Ricky away by starting our bikes and threatening to just ride off without him.

From Kandos we made a short trip to Rylestone to check out Tanks and Tailpipes, a small shop devoted to motorcycle memorabilia, unfortunately it was closed but the owner later contacted me to say that if we came again we should give him a call he’ll open up specifically for us, now that’s service.

The ride from Rylestone to Mudgee was flat open country with light traffic and we all hummed along at around a steady 85 kph taking in the verdant green scenery, vineyards and lush farmlands.  

Our lodgings in Mudgee was the Woolpack Hotel in the centre of town.  The hotel has a Chinese Restaurant and we were all surprised at the size and quality of the meals, definitely a great place for a meal if you visit Mudgee.

Day three greeted us with much warmer temperatures, clear skies and great promise and the ride didn’t disappoint. We caught breakfast at the Mudgee Bakery and Cafe, which by Bakery standards is enormous, the food was also good. Ross Luff and I agreed the sausage rolls were just about perfect.

Nine o’clock and onwards towards Hill End we went.  Historically this section of road through to Hill End has been pretty poorly littered with potholes, bad shoves and rough surfaces but there has been an enormous amount of work done over the last two years and the worst sections have been well sorted. The only downside is we got held up on a couple of occasions in roadworks and once for a flock of sheep, but generally we were grateful for the improvements and found the section a joy to ride.

Hill End currently has no shops, we were prepared and had an esky of snacks and drinks to keep us happy in the park, the Pub is currently being restored so given few months riders will be able to once again grab a cool ale and shoot the breeze on the footsteps out front.

Our next leg took us down the range to Sofala, again there has been considerable work on this section and for those wanting to push on it offers a mix of up and down dale twisties, tight turns and more than a few technical challenges, I certainly found it well suited to my Honda Spada’s character.

Scenery? Oh goodness we had scenery, the view over the valley is breathtaking so should you simply want to meander down to Sofala you’ll still find plenty to enjoy.

In Sofala we grabbed some lunch, cool beers,  then sat joking and reminiscing on the verandah of the pub.  Life in Sofala is pretty quite but the town has a certain “run down” charm that encourages you to take a little “on foot” wander, which many of us did.

Back on the road we headed back up the twisty Hill End road to the turn off to Bathurst via the Turondale Road.  This is a fabulous road, full of steep climbs and descents, slow and fast corners and stunning vistas.  It’s not the smoothest road but is fabulously rewarding and as you get closer to Bathurst it straightens out and gives you a few kilometres to settle your senses and rest your body before reaching town.  Note that to obtain fuel you will need to go all the way into Bathurst because oddly despite all the new suburbs on the Turondale side of town no one has seen fit to provide a fuel station.

Our final leg for the day was the 65km trek through the hills to Orange, again in keeping with the day we took the back roads consisting of Ophir Rd, then onto White Rocks Road and finally into Orange via Icely Rd.  All of these are blessed with minimal traffic and maximum entertainment value, think steep hills, tight bends, sweepers, great views and more.  Why would you take the highway when you can take byways such as this.

It’s fair to say that by Orange the team were feeling somewhat tired and needed a couple of drinks in front of our motel rooms whilst we compared notes on the days adventure.  Meanwhile Ricky had a little play with his XT,  Ross checked his Norton over, Howard adjusted his clutch (should have been a warning) Peter checked his fluids, the rest watched on offering advice whilst sipping on our beers.  Eventually we found our way into the Town Square Hotel Restaurant and rewarded ourselves with a $20.00 steak, which was way more than just good.

And so we come to our final day and the return trip back to Goulburn.

Great weather, great company and a fabulous breakfast.  

Sadly for Howard Kneebone his brave Jawa decided to lose all drive to the rear wheel a few kms short of Millthorpe, so first on the trailer.  Howard spent considerable time mulling over just what might have gone wrong and at one stage contemplated attempting a repair at our brunch stop at Tuena.  Amazingly he had the problem sorted within a few hours of getting home, it turned out to be a worn clutch, and Howard handily had one in his spares supply.

Ross Luff had suggested we ride to Millthorpe for breakfast, that turned out to be a top idea, we ate at the Old Mill Cafe.  The coffee drinkers among us agreed the coffee was the best we had consumed in a long time, the food was truly excellent and the feel of the place welcoming, we will definitely be back.

As with the rest of the tour we sort of keep away from main roads, thus we took the long way to Millthorpe and from Millthorpe through to Blayney, Barry, Hobbies Yards and Trunkey Creek, at which point we joined the main road through to Crookwell, which was mercifully very light on traffic.  

All of the mornings ride was brilliant only disturbed by some long overdue roadworks around Barry to fix an appalling pothole ridden section.

The ride from Trunkey though to Tuena is a great ride that offers nice challenges to any rider and bike. Unfortunately Chris Throwers’ progress down the twisties into Tuena on the mighty postie was impeded by a “First Aid” coffee van, he considered a radical overtaking manoeuver but then thought better of it.

We snacked at Tuena and checked out the pub which has reopened after extensive and ongoing restoration works, the bar area looks fabulous and will inevitably become a favourite watering spot for motorcyclists doing the “big loop” on weekends. 

With the ride through the legendary Tuena to Binda section ahead of us most riders decided to simply make the most of the twists, turns and climbs and meet up for fuel for a final good bye in Crookwell.  

The road did not disappoint, the surface is good and the only downer is the 80k limit that taunts for much of the ride.  Nonetheless a well ridden tiddler can be a lot of fun despite the limit and everyone arrived at Crookwell with very wide smiles.

Once we fuelled up at Crookwell we all gathered for a final photo, handshakes a few laughs a couple of tall stories and then set off in unison for the final 50k back to Goulburn.

The 2026 Tiddler Tour was a great success and we’ll all be back to do it again in 2027.