With only a hundred kilometres to go and all day to get there, I was in no rush to leave Mark and Jenny’s good company and lovely home. Delaying until ten o’clock, I rolled off with a large and tasty-looking sandwich to tide me through to distant shops. Mark’s tip of a gravel alternative to Little Wanganui was a boon – flat and deserted.

Not that the main road was exactly busy, I could certainly get used to the complete lack of traffic. A another fine day, layers were soon shed and the main climb of the day meandered on. I enjoyed stopping to read the history boards of long-since gone settlements, they mostly seemed to have sprung up for putting the road through. Little wonder they’re now gone.

Still a bit of low snow close to the coast after the storm earlier in the week.

Somewhere along the way I remembered the Charming Creek Walkway and that I could add some trail and gravel riding into an otherwise flat coastal remainder of the route into town. Having whizzed down off the road over the bluffs and across the Mokihinui River and briefly found a headwind, I turned left and headed for Seddonville. NZ Cycle Trail signs encouraged me that this route would go through. However, after some concerted gravel climbing and passing some of the ubiquitous West Coast coal just sitting there in the bank on the roadside, I reached the trailhead to find a sign telling that the walkway was blocked by a very large slip at the other end and impassable. Some earlier signage would have been useful before embarking on a fruitless twenty-five kilometre deadend.

Into Seddonville, these hills enough to tell me there would still be plenty of snow on the Old Ghost Rd.

With fifty flat and coastal kilometres to Westport I still had plenty of daylight to take it rather leisurely; I never did find a shop – so that sandwich and yesterday’s accumulated snacks came in handy. Unfortunately I seemed to have timed my ride past with shift change at Stockton Mine, so the traffic got much larger and heavier for a while – but it was not a worry. Serendipitously, I crossed paths with Nina riding to work as I entered town. I tagged along a bit chatting, while trying to remember the lay of the land from five years before.

Quite a nice evening really.

After first dinner, I found home for the next few days and, after all arrived home from work, planning for the next few days commenced. To my delight I learned that the new Paparoa Track had reopened for the first time since lockdown that very day; more importantly, Nina and Rachel wanted to ride it in both directions over the weekend. I could hardly say no to that – considering it was on my vague plan for the following week. Friday was a restful day with an excellent little MTB loop up on the Denniston Plateau and tasting some of the local delicacies – I may have had a large pie each time we drove through Waimangaroa, the first two of many pie-lights of the West Coast.