Last night 4200 riders, 350 volunteers and an untold number of others packed into a slim crescent of dry grass along the Dunkeld racecourse.

That's almost 5000 people (including 2000 school kids) fed, watered, entertained and safely sent on their way.

Conditions were tight. Tents were packed in like sardines. Every available inch of space was used. In some cases, smaller kits were erected almost under the wheels of parked semi-trailers, or at least jammed up beside them.

To give you an example, the nearest toilet was five minutes walk away from my humble strip of canvas, the showers a good 100m at the other end of the site.

But amongst all this cheek-by-jowl living, there was no road rage, no pushing-in, no bad manners, infinite patience in queues, an undying sense of humour when the unexpected happened (such as the hot water running out in the showers last night) and a lightning quick response to help out if someone needed it.

There is, undoubtedly, a unique spirit to this event. (If only the world operated like this!)

But for me, the real stars of the Great Victorian Bike Ride are the old folks, the people aged 70-plus. The ride is full of them, nuggetty men and women quietly peddling into the wind and occasional rain, ploughing slowly up hills, seemingly unstoppable, giving hope to us all.

Today I spent 20 minutes riding beside Ralph, 71, from Melbourne. He started doing marathons at 48, completed 13, then switched to bike riding.

"Don't worry about your legs, mate," he told me. "It's all psychological, these things.

"I've friends saying I'm mad doing this and I look at them having hip injuries and in and out hospital and I wonder who the mad ones are."

Peggy, in her seventies, was doing her fifth ride with her daughter and grand-daughter.

One old fellow, gaunt from that horrible day on Sunday, clung to a tree on the side of the road while the winds whipped around us.

"Just need a little break," he said.

The event's oldest woman, Shirley Boyle from Lake Goldsmith, is 78.

She bought her first bike at 70 and has ridden every ride for the last six years except one.

"That was the mountains to the sea and I thought no mountains for me," she laughed.

"I'm an active person," she added. "I garden a lot."

Shirley says she's simply clocking up memories for her old age.

A rider I was talking with at lunch today summed it up nicely.

"You've got to be tough to be old," he said..

And these plucky elderlies solidly pushing ahead every day are certainly proof of that.