Category Archives: bikes

Central Otago Long Way Home – Day Two – Naseby to Wanaka

Surprised to wake so cold in the hut (admittedly it’s still got a tarpaulin for a back wall), a leisurely start to a bluebird day had me on the road out of Naseby before seven. I found out later it had dropped to a summery 5ºC that morning. Soon I was making my way on forestry roads to the Otago Central Rail Trail. Nary a soul about, I just had the landscape to share with rabbits. Hundreds of rabbits; I saw more evidence of pest control in a few short backcountry kilometres last weekend than here, disappointing.

The pace picked up when I hit the easy gradient of the ever popular rail trail. Ever popular after nine-thirty in the morning that is, I didn’t pass a rider on the trail before then. It was a little surreal riding such a popular route in the height of summer, in beautiful weather and there being no-one about. Unlike my previous time on the trail there was no howling nor-wester to battle against with nowhere to hide. The conditions were glorious.

The sheep seemed surprised to see a cyclist so early in the day.

Always gentle gradients and smooth surfaces on the Rail Trail.

Rescuing an errant and adorable small lost dog achieved, I left the rail trail at Omakau. But not before stopping for breakfast/brunch/first lunch/whatever at the bakery. Scrumptious venison and mushroom pie anyone? I stashed an equally large bacon and egg example for second lunch and headed for Thomson Gorge Road. Up Racecourse Road again, it heads north out of town and ascends slightly before I hit the gravel and the first gates of the next few hours. Leaving the plains, this predictably happened:

With the sun now high in the sky, the sudden fifteen percent gradient soon had me in my easiest gear.

I came close to running out of gears – a rare event indeed, even on a loaded bike, when one has so many. With no traffic, the gradient and the sun beating down on me, the playlist of current favourites encouraged me up the climb. It was worth stopping to admire the view occasionally, not a tough decision to make. Nearing the end of the steepest part I came across the only vehicle I saw on the road – daytrippers from Cromwell. There were frequent stops to open and close gates that broke up the forward and upward progression.

Looking east towards the Hawkdun Range

Out over Omakau to the nicely named Raggedy Range. Although from this distance, I taken umbrage with the name.

Views of the bottom of Thomson Gorge were elusive, but I was happy with what I did see.

Nearing the crest, I stopped to admire the flowers. The bees on the forage for borage took rather a liking to my bright blue shirt; I escaped unscathed.

That crest naturally was not the top; the road dropped, I stopped for more gates and passed a group of five on bikes climbing. Even without a load, they were not making it look easy. I kept admiring the scenery as the climbing resumed. Just breaking the thousand metre mark, I was beginning to think that surely I would descend soon – the Lindis River was getting closer on the GPS. Rounding a corner I tried to convince myself that I would not be climbing/pushing up this, it was far steeper than anything I’d ridden earlier:

Turns out I can at least interpret a line on a GPS a little bit, and I could rest knowing I was at the top – and tuck into that pie. Two hours of ascent provided a screaming thirty minutes of descent – such fun. Especially as I managed to slow enough not to attempt ploughing through gates.

Part way down and there’s still a little snow on the Pisas – beyond them, Wanaka.

Stopping to phone family friends, I decided to head to Wanaka to catch up with them and stay the night – hoping to ride up the Cardrona Valley & onto Roaring Meg the following day. The fifty kilometres were a pretty even mix of corrugated gravel, holiday-busy highway (no trucks at least) and the Newcastle Trail beside the Clutha. It is odd when on a loaded bike passing, in opposing directions, on lovely singletrack mountain-bikers out for a fast ride. Wanaka was heaving with holidaymakers, I was pleased not to have to find a spot to bivy. Following the trail around the shore, I could not believe how low the lake was. No wonder there had been mutterings about low hydro levels at work, and therefore increased power prices.

Another great day – this time on a road I recently didn’t know existed and had picked off the map as looking a good connector. Certainly was, the right level of challenge for my little post-Christmas escape. Solitude was bliss, help with the dozens of gates would have been useful but.

Central Otago Long Way Home – Day One – Oamaru to Naseby

Having completely surprised my family with the return for Christmas, I didn’t think they’d mind too much if I went off on a short bikepacking trip for part of the two weeks I was down south. That’s what I told myself anyway, as the prospect of a fortnight off work with no adventure was not appealing. The previous year (and in fact that year) we’d made a Boxing Day trip to Naseby and I watched from the car as we passed a few bikepackers struggling up Danseys Pass in the sun. I determined to return on my bike.

Knowing that there was a hot tub and a mostly-built hut waiting at the end of the day gave even more to look forward to as I planned the trip. It’s quite easy to put bikepacking loops of varying degrees of length and difficulty together in Central Otago; I worked some easy riding amongst more challenging sections into the loop I planned to get from Oamaru to my parents’ house over a few days (I thought four). Pleasingly, I could link favourite bits I’d previously ridden with sections I’d been wanting to ride for years to form an interesting route.

With Adele & James’s house completely emptying after Christmas, I had ample time on an overcast Wednesday morning to unpack, assemble and load my bike. With a quick stop to buy supplies, I was rolling out of Oamaru on familiar trail – the Alps2Ocean, albeit in reverse to the normal direction. A bit of a throwback to the previous post-Christmas adventure – Alps2Ocean in two and a half days with my family. First pie was consumed shortly after in Weston before enjoying the rolling scenery of the Wairareka Valley.

Which may have included a little bit of industrial scenery.

And farms, there are many farms. I was steadily ascending a gentle climb towards the horizon at the left of this shot.

Some were making slower progress than others.

Dropping off here to the valley floor, I left the Alps2Ocean route and headed for Tokarahi. From this point, the rest of my riding for the day was on road.

After the village I spied a loaded cycle-tourer ahead. With my lightly packed bike it was not long until I overhauled the guy, Guy, from Dunedin. It was fun to have a companion for a while and as the traffic was so light, we could easily chat – a lot of bike touring stories, naturally.

Alas, shortly after this point the hills got steeper – my distinct weight advantage had me riding off into the distance.

Thoroughly enjoying the quiet gravel road, winding, climbing, and dropping the riding conditions were perfect – slightly overcast, warm but not hot, and with little wind. I distinctly remember being impressed by the very same scenes that grabbed my attention on previous drives over the pass. It’s even better on a bike as you’re out in the open and it’s so much easier to pause and soak it all in.

The south eastern extent of the Oteake Conservation Park – I really should spend more time bikepacking around here, there is some great country and a network of small, basic huts.

I’m slowly learning to travel lighter. Finally I had ditched the tent, borrowing Adele’s bivy bag to trial the concept. Verdict: absolutely fantastic having less on the handlebars, but still having shelter should one need it. Next bikepacking purchase…

Reaching the pass, a shade over 900 m elevation, it was a lovely descent following Kye Burn.

Stopping at the Danseys Pass pub, I was too early for the kitchen to satisfy my hunger – I’d have to try my luck in Naseby. The decline of the once favoured Royal Hotel had been the subject of much discussion recently in our family. Crossing the Kye Burn for the last time, it was easy to think I’d done all the hard work. But the road got busier, and climbed to Naseby into a wind determined to slow me down.

Big wheels rolling down the track into town, I tried my luck at the Ancient Briton. The delicious rump steak had been earned and sitting in the beer garden with the sun still in the sky was very pleasant indeed. There had been a mountain-bike race on the local trails earlier in the day, so there were plenty of people around. I enjoyed a rather long bikepacking chat with a pro 24 hour racer before heading off.

The water in the hot tub (luxury!) was still warm from the Boxing Day visit, I lit the burner to send it back up to 40ºC while I busied myself finding space for my bed on the hut floor. I got distracted enjoying the sun dropping towards the pond down the hill. A soak for the muscles after an afternoon’s riding was just bliss; much time staring up through the canopy at large birds lazily circling overhead seemed quite the way to finish a thoroughly enjoyable day. Danseys Pass – well worth the ride; it opens up a lot of excellent bikepacking territory.

No bivy bag for me that night.

The 2017 Letter – Just A Little Late

Predictably, the end of the year got busy – organising Christmas surprises is rather more fun and pressing than putting musings of the previous year through the keyboard. After spending most of the year, for various reasons, saying I was not coming home for consecutive Christmases, I got everything lined up and duly arrived in Oamaru for the festive season. Somehow I’d managed to keep the secret, and there was much surprise and many hugs – so much fun, although I don’t imagine I can pull off such a coup again.

Making a surprise visit does make it difficult to plan other activities for the rest of the stay – but it worked out well with lovely time with family, much food and drink and managing to get out bikepacking for a few days over various passes I’d had my eye on for a while – more on that in another post. Biking and traveling at that time of year does give plenty of opportunity to consider the year past and the one to come.

Looking back on 2016’s missive, 2017 did not have such momentous biking or family events – but it was still exceptional and with all sorts of wonderful things going on.

First bikepacking trip was whipping through the Alps2Ocean with Adele in two and a half days – ably supported, and ridden in parts, by Mum and Dad.

Living in Napier continues to be delight me. I enjoyed much time walking, biking and generally exploring the surrounds. With my house within easy walking distance of the city centre and many attractions, there’s never a shortage of places to wander and things to see. I particularly enjoyed my first proper taste of the Art Deco festival – even if it was curtailed a little by unseasonably wet weather.

A big dress-up party for the whole city for days – brilliant fun!

The odd local bikepacking overnighter kept my hand in, as did the occasional sortie on gravel roads out in the hills. There’s still plenty more to explore, many places left to bike. Somehow I ended up competing in the local winter cyclocross series – on my full-suspension mountain bike. It was even muddy. To my surprise, I did enough in the first three races to win the B Grade series (skipping the final race as biking in Rotorua is so much more fun!) – turns out big chunky tyres are useful in such conditions, who knew?

Seven thousand kilometres per year on various bikes seems to be the norm now, achieving that mark for the fourth consecutive year (2016 being bigger with the 3000 km Tour Aotearoa blip); well pleased to be able to spend so much time outside doing one of the things I love most. With the MTB park at work closed for a lot of the year after extensive storm damage, there were many rides up and down Te Mata Peak – always worth it for the ever-changing view. The descents are rather fun too.

If I can see this hill from my house, surely I can see my house from this hill??

I didn’t take a lot of leave from work during the year, preferring to save it for when I really want to take it. But two visits from family were definitely such times. Mum and Dad’s getting-close-to-annual winter visit was the most fun yet – the highlight getting away for a few days to the remote and hilly north-east Manawatu to stay on a big sheep station; the bike ride was pretty cool too. After two years, Adele and James finally visited for early-Christmas (I managed to get through that week without letting slip that I’d see them in less than two weeks) and it was a busy six days of biking, walking, seeing sights, eating, drinking and generally enjoying the company of loved ones.

Beach walks with parents – not so hilly.

I finally made it to Cape Kidnappers. It’s quite a long, flat, hard walk – but the views make up for it on a hot summer’s day.

Continuing to host the occasional cycle tourist through warmshowers, I got inspired early in the year to start hosting AirBnB guests. As well as bringing in a bit of extra money for home maintenance, it’s nice to sometimes have a bit of company in the house – as with the cycle tourists, it’s also great to hear accents from around the globe. Traveling abroad without leaving home in some ways.

I’ve enjoyed slowly learning various home maintenance tasks. AirBnB was very busy early on and helped to fund the major house maintenance and improvements of the year – a large scaffold for me to paint the north wall over two busy weeks and to have the window I’d been thinking about for two years installed. Well pleased with the result, & surprised that I rather enjoyed the painting (I did get to listen to a lot of audiobooks). I just have to wait for winter to see the real effect of the new window.

Yes, it is a house. But it’s in better condition than it was before.

Small steps of self-improvement made for an interesting year. The most unexpected was the difference making my diet a lot healthier had on my bikepacking. I signed up to the Mega Grind keen to do 800 km of bikepacking in an area of the North Island that I’d spent little time – despite being so close to where I grew up, and not far from my first job. It certainly delivered in that respect with fantastic North Island hilly terrain, coastal view and gravel roads.

What I was not expecting was the profound difference losing five or so kilograms of unnecessary mass would do to my biking. Previously, I’d been pleased with my ~180 km/day average on the Tour Aotearoa . Suddenly, with no real difference in preparation, bike or gear carried, I finished the event averaging 250 km/day! What in the how? Carrying less mass, and being able to bike stronger for longer was a revelation that quickly had me pondering what else I may be able to achieve. I’m excited to find out. Also, I’m no longer content with a sixteen day finish on the TA – I may have to go back sooner than previously anticipated.

Just a few days later I was back in Rotorua for a completely different kind of bike event – the Singlespeed World Championships. Really it’s just a big fancy dress party of five hundred people on mountain bikes with only one gear. And beer. What’s not to like? A complete blast with friends old and new.

Which rather leaves this year to consider. Excitingly, there are plenty of new things to learn. With a few visits of family and friends on the cards, I’ll mostly stick around exploring home and the vicinity. There’s plenty more strength to be gained, all in the name of riding slightly further and a little faster to explore more new places; I’d really like to do a different bikepacking event of over a thousand kilometres.

Most definitely excited to find what this year holds, I hope it’s great for you too.

Sibling visit

A proposed Christmas in Napier was enough to finally get Adele and James to visit me. As it transpired, it was an early Christmas without the full complement of Pheasants. The warm dry December that allowed me to paint an exterior wall of my house at every spare moment continued for the six days they were here. It was wonderfully warm (Adele may have melted a bit) which meant we spent much time outside visiting many local attractions – many of which I’d not quite managed to get to previously.

First up, Shine Falls was about an hour drive north – the furtherest afield we’d venture during the whole stay. Situated in the Boundary Stream mainland island, I’d gotten close on previous bikepacking trips, but had never made it to the tallest falls in Hawke’s Bay.

Leaving the car, the open pasture quickly narrowed to walking up a bush clad gorge.

Purported to be an hour’s walk, the bushwalking reminded Adele and I of many such walks we did as a family when younger.

But we are fitter and stronger than we used to be; half an hour later – waterfalls. The mist and downdraft generated cooled us nicely after the warm later afternoon stroll. Pheasants don’t seem to have the “swim at every opportunity” gene, so we left that to James.

The walk down the valley only took twenty minutes so it turned out that the drive each way took longer than the entire walk! But that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm for being outdoors, discovering new sights and enjoying the native forest; there may have also been ice cream on the return journey.

Adele was determined that my house should be decorated for Christmas – as I’m not usually home for Christmas, this has never occurred to me. I managed to minimise unnecessary consumption and am quite pleased with the lights adorning my deck, the miniature tree and tinsel down the bannisters. With all the weatherboard painting my barbecue had remained neglected; but with visitors keen to cook amazingly, it made a reappearance.

The following morning, mountain bikes were assembled and loaded for a quick introduction to the local trails.

Since the trees have been cleared from Gateway, the views to work and home have really opened up. The price of that being part of the trail network is now exposed to the sun.

The tides lined up well to walk along the beach to Cape Kidnappers. Cape Kidnappers, which I’d frequently looked over to from the end of my street, marveling at the cliffs rising out of the Pacific. With a quick turnaround from mountain-biking, we rushed out the door, stopped at Clive for pies, parked at Clifton and began the nine kilometre beach walk beneath the cliffs. The day was hot, but there was sufficient breeze that it was bearable as we made good time pounding along the increasingly revealed hard sand.

Leaving Clifton and looking back around the bay towards Napier.

The cliffs did stretch a long way, but I did at least know that before deciding we should walk rather than take the tourist bus through the sheep station.

At Black Reef we saw our first gannet colony.

Followed closely with the best views of the cape we would get, as the route then left the beach to climb above the cape.

Gannets! There were, literally, thousands.

How fascinating they were as they nested, fed young fur-ball chicks, landed, partners cutely preened each other on one’s return, took off, fought and generally made quite a racket. Very much worth the long walk – well, it was a long time to be walking on a flat surface in the sun. I really noticed all the walking over the following days – it turns out just two weeks of using spare time clambering over a scaffold and not walking around the Hill has quite an effect.

Heading back to the beach to return to Clifton, Black Reef is off the point at the end of that beach.

We were pretty spent that evening, so had a restful one waiting for good friends Dan and Jacqui to arrive from New Plymouth. There ensued a Saturday of winery tours, on which I drove everyone around – which was far more enjoyable than it sounds. I did get fed plenty of tasty food and got to do another staple Hawke’s Bay activity that I’d sadly neglected over the last thirty months.

Saturday night was the aforementioned early Christmas celebration which consisted of fantastic food, predictably lame crackers, great friends and receiving the big outdoor bean bag on which I’m currently sitting typing this. Sunday morning was equally slow to start – we went back out to the Mill Block to ride a few more trails in the heat. That necessitated a stop on the way back to town to swim in a river before Jacqui and Dan left for home.

I’d been keen to show off both the views from and bike trails of Te Mata Peak, so that was Monday morning sorted. Shielded from the blazing sun on the lower half of the climb, we did at least have a bit of a breeze to cool us on the more exposed parts. The peak was crawling with cruise ship tourists, many of whom you’d think had never seen mountain bikes before judging by their amusing comments. Even on a poor-weather day I appreciate the varying views – this day we enjoyed picking out the various places we’d visited as we turned and headed down most of the trail options.

Somehow I’d forgotten than Emma and Brent have a pool; really, cooling off in there was not the real reason we visited. Lunch at Chalk and Cheese was topped off by irresistible cheese tasting, which may be almost as good as wine tasting – so much delicious cheese, we may have bought a bit. With the mercury through thirty degrees Celsius, how could I not take my guests to the oldest ice creamery in the country? It was plain to see how they’ve been trading for ninety-odd years – delicious.

Somewhere in here I think there was another Napier Hill walk (still one of my favourite things to do out my front door), but a week later those six days are a bit of a blur of activity. The final day of the visit was spent packing bikes before a final art deco drive and tasty lunch on a patio down at West Quay (a kilogram of mussels, you say? Don’t mind if I do) – nice to do that as I so often ride home from work and see people drinking at Shed 2 and think how lovely it looks.

Just like that it was time for the trip to airport, plans for future trips were made and goodbyes said. It was worth the wait, Hawke’s Bay definitely turned on cracking weather which allowed much activity with dear family.