“Hey AI, create an image of a dog riding a gravel bike, racing a goat!”

The clocks have long since gone back an hour, the sun is getting lower in the sky, and the snakes have (mostly) gone back to bed. That can only mean one thing here in the Southern Hemisphere. Gravel season!

My gravel bike has been neglected recently. After racing the UCI Gravel Worlds Qualifier late last year my attention turned back to the road and some different goals. All my training for the UCI Tour de Brisbane has seen me cranking out the road miles on my Canyon Aeroad instead. Now that the winter chill is creeping into the morning air, it’s time to rectify that.

I’m lucky enough to have a number of locally accessible gravel roads nearby, and many more just a short hop in the car away. The mostly traffic-free quiet country gravel backroads make for fantastic training grounds. Getting fast and loose on the gravel is the perfect way to hone your bike handling skills, such as smooth cornering and descending.

Close by there’s also a vast network of gravel trails I am yet to fully explore. The nearby Tangara Trail consists of over 200km of criss-crossing trails through bushland, coastal reserves and the rural areas around Seven Mile Beach and South Arm. That’s a lot of exploring to do!

RELATED: Five tips for your first gravel race

So as winter steadily approaches here in Tasmania, gravel season will be in full swing. At least until the start of spring that is, when it becomes crazy swooping magpie season. The magpies down here in Tassie seem to favour the trails. Click the image below for the GPLama magpie attack video…