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around home, Aus, bikepacking, bikes, family, friends, MTB, national park

The Christmas Letter 2016

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Once again, I try to look back on the year. 2016 has definitely been momentous in many ways and on the whole, another excellent year. I’m still loving life in Napier, my work is great overall, having my own house is fantastic and I’m riding bikes plenty (with twelve days to go, I’m rapidly closing in on 10,000 km for the year – easily my biggest year ever; half of that is commuting to work).

The year started off with a couple of overnight bikepacking trips as some form of light training. This one riding the gravel road from Wairoa past Lake Waikaremoana towards Rotorua.

I also persuaded Steve to join me on a great local ride to Everett’s Campsite for another overnighter. The hills back there are well worth seeing and riding.

That and commuting to work was basically my preparation for my Tour Aotearoa attempt. Mum & Dad came up to Napier and dropped me off at Cape Reinga – the goal being to ride 3000 km to Bluff self-supported on a new route that was a mixture of as many cycle trails and backroads as possible (two-hundred odd others were also doing this). It was a grand adventure and I was thrilled with all I saw, the experiences I had and how I rode – finishing two days sooner than I needed to, in sixteen days, overcoming some horrendous weather and slight illness to do so.

Crossing the Hokianga to Rawene – I was feeling far less than brilliant and rested/was sick for a couple of hours in the heat. I got better.

The Timber Trail in the Central North Island was a highlight, even in the early morning mist. I must return.

Much to my surprise, my favourite day was through northern Manawatu. So close to where I went to university – yet I’d never been there, the rural landscape was sensational. The hilly gravel roads were excellent too.

Another highlight was staying overnight in the remote old gold mining area of Big River; even better because best-sister Adele joined me for a couple of days.

The West Coast Wilderness Trail is also on the must-return-to list, as it’s supposed to be beautiful – but it sparked the start of about four-hundred kilometres of rain for me, so I didn’t see much.

After freezing riding up the Cardrona Valley, being blown by a storm to Mossburn and then battling the same storm (reduced to pushing my bike alongside a flat highway into 120 km/hr winds) I was well pleased and satisfied to finish in 16.1 days.

It took quite some time to recover from that; I kept riding to work, but I was eating five meals a day for weeks afterwards – on the ride, I lost about four kilograms that I didn’t really have spare!

My winter break was a week down in Central Otago for Adele & James’s wedding. A fantastic time of family, friends, celebration, beautiful scenery and good food. I loved it.

Perhaps my only bikepacking event for this season, was a very enjoyable four days on backroads around Rotorua. It was fascinating returning to an area near where I grew up and seeing it from the different perspectives that a bike and being older give.

Still recovering from 550 km of riding in four days, came the sudden (but ultimately unsurprising) news of the passing of my grandfather (the last of my grandparents to go). Thus set in motion a whirlwind November. One weekend I was in Sydney for the funeral (it went as well as could be expected), then back to work for a blur of a week, before being back in Australia the next weekend for a long planned trip seeing best-friends from Canada (who were back for a family wedding). A month after all that, it still looms large.

We stayed at Arapiles, where Adele joined me for the renowned rock-climbing (it was quite a family & friends month). I almost popped my other shoulder and swore off rock-climbing forever. I didn’t sleep much camping in the west-Victorian weather, but it was a great trip.

I did, of course, take a bike and managed a great day’s gravel riding in Grampians National Park.

Later this week I head south for two weeks with my family – I’m really looking forward to it. While generally quiet, which is how I tend to like it, 2016 has proved to have its share of momentous occasions and has been one of the best yet. I’m eagerly looking forward to next year and seeing what it holds. There are no fixed plans, but it promises to be another great year in Hawke’s Bay, exploring a little further afield, work will be busy and challenging, and I sure hope for plenty of riding, in different places, with whoever will come along for it.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – do come and visit Napier if you’re so inclined.

around home, bikepacking, bikes, family, NZ

The Christmas Letter 2015

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Looking back at this year, I can safely say it’s worked out better than I imagined it would when, in last year’s Christmas missive, I wrote: “I’ll slowly start looking for a job in the new year, hoping to find one that means I can live in a large town/small city that has easy access to good mountain-biking – I think then there would be a chance I may be able stay still for a while and not spend so much time and money on travelling…”!

As it turns out, I did rather slowly, in fits & starts, look for a job at the beginning of the year. I was rather picky in what I was applying for, so I had plenty of time to spend time with family, ride bikes, visit friends and travel a little around NZ. Highlights before starting a job were:

My first brevet – the Kiwi Brevet – 1150 km of self-supported riding around the top of the beautiful South Island. I was pleased to finish in a few hours short of seven days.

A bit of time in and around Wellington catching up with friends and family – with some bikepacking thrown in to keep the legs happy/wrecked. The photo above from an excellent day’s ride around the coast from Wellington to Martinborough – a spectacular coastline so close to the capital.

A few weeks further up the North Island meant a bit more easy bike touring visiting friends and family, a quick trip over to Sydney to see family (particularly my aging grandfather) and an excellent wedding of family friends over Easter.

Two trips to Westport to visit Adele in her home-for-now were of course filled with plenty of adventure: caving, hiking, and more biking. This picture from the spectacular Old Ghost Road trail – which has since been completed, I’m very much looking forward to riding it in its entirety.

This photo from the other memorable ride from those trips – the Heaphy Track. It’s spectacular! Disappointed not to be able to ride the whole thing due to weather at the first attempt, the two-day Heaphy-Double James & I did was great fun and slightly-epic.

During the second Westport trip I’d secured a job as a process engineer again – it ticked all my most important boxes: in a plant that makes something, a good small city (Napier) to live in, some mountain-biking and a feasible bike-commute. So after quite a few months enjoying staying with Mum & Dad in their new home and exploring the area, I moved north to become a North Islander again.

Just like that I’ve settled into a strangely normal non-wandering life. I’m liking the work (it’s still novel after five months); disturbingly quickly I bought a house; this city is great with its climate, history and beautiful art deco; the local produce and wine is exceptional – along with the Farmers Markets; there is mountain-biking next door to work and plenty of gravel roads to explore in the hills. Much to my surprise, I found Italian language lessons locally – so that’s a complete bonus. I’m still a little amazed it’s worked out this well so far.

Arranging the purchase of my first home-of-my-own and then moving in and furnishing it has taken much of the last few months. Well worth it though – I can have visitors!

A few pictures from around home:

Probably the most astonishing news of my year is that which sees me now own a road bike. It’s great for the commute, but I’m still to be won over for distances longer than that. I only really post it here so Grandad may see it, although I may have left it too late for him to comprehend; not that I’ll ever get to his standard of extreme road adventures.

That’s about my year. Not too much on the horizon for next year (except one ride I signed up for without really considering the consequences of doing so) – still enjoying having a place to call home and not having a great desire to travel some distance at every opportunity. Assuredly, there will be bike adventures to be had and I’m hoping for at least a couple of trips south.

Merry Christmas to all (although I’m struggling to believe it’s actually Christmas) and all the best for the coming year. If it happens to bring you to Napier, get in touch.

Africa, around home, bikepacking, bikes, Europe, family, friends, London, MTB, NZ, travel, UK

The Christmas Letter 2014

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It’s that time again when I try to remember where the year has gone and what I’ve been doing. Once again it’s been a rather varied year – with only a couple of lows in between numerous highs.

As the closure of the synthetic rubber factory where I worked for almost three years in the south of England loomed, the first half of the year was rather quiet on the travel front as I tried to save money for the approaching unemployment. While I was never too concerned with how I’d cope with losing my job (other adventures & parts of the world beckoned), it turned out to be very difficult seeing the demise of a plant that had been going for over fifty years and about one hundred and thirty people lose their jobs. The last few months after production ceased were particularly tedious – but I enjoyed throwing myself into my study of the Italian language (which I’d started learning at work at the end of 2013).

The exception to the difficult first seven months of the year with little happening (except riding bikes – I was still doing that, of course; the highlight was finally riding the South Downs Way) was May. Mum visited for almost six weeks and Adele was also over for three weeks of that. There were plenty of little trips here & there, as I tried to show Adele a bit of Europe and a holiday that didn’t include some sort of extreme adventure. Highlights were a long weekend with Mum in Barcelona; five days in Paris with both Mum & Adele; a rushed weekend showing London to Adele; taking Adele up to Scotland to visit a friend and do a little bit of hiking; and finally, a fantastic family wedding in Tuscany – with plenty of enjoyable time with extended family, some sightseeing, great food & wine and some hiking in the Chianti hills.

Tweed RunWe came across the Tweed Run in London. It was all rather odd, but looked a lot of fun.

Glasgow – I was pleasantly surprised to be so impressed.

Ben NevisOn top of the UK – most of the way up Ben Nevis was really nice, it was only a little bleak at the top.

San GimignanoBack in San Gimignano.

Work finally finished at the end of July – I promptly moved back to (the ever dependable and hospitable) cousin Trish’s in London the following day and took ten days preparing for three months of bikepacking (backpacking on a bike – minimal luggage carried compared to traditional cycle touring to enable more off-road riding) of west-Europe, with two months touring Italy being the main goal. I had hoped to do a big cycle tour of Europe in 2015 before moving back to NZ, but with work being what it was the timing changed.

In the end I only managed three weeks and two-thousand kilometres of touring, as I found the wet August and mud in Belgium was not much fun – after a week of that I was getting tired of solo-touring. Having said that, there were plenty of good times and highlights – including some of the people I met along the way; visiting a huge old ironworks in the Saarland (sad, I know); my birthday spent in Strasbourg; the Jura mountains (in France, near the Swiss border) and best of all: crossing the Alps into Italy over the same pass my grandfather rode over on his Euro cycle tour sixty-five years before me – that was a very special & memorable day.

All ready to leave.

I quite liked what I saw of Antwerp.

Another night, another forest, another wild-camp-site.

Strasbourg.

On the shores of Lake Geneva.

Pretty happy to be at Great St Bernard Pass – four hours of steady, but rarely difficult, climbing.

I’d organised (about a week beforehand) to stay a week working on a vineyard in the Aosta Valley (the most north-west province of Italy, in the Alps bordering both Monto Bianco & Monto Rosa) – in exchange for my labour, I would get food & board. I enjoyed the food (so much pasta, cheese, wine, grappa & all manner of things from the garden); the work (it was harvest season – so we mostly picked grapes and I learnt to make wine); trying to practice my Italian speaking; mountain scenery & lifestyle; hiking in the Alps; and most of all, the wonderful people I met and got to know. Although I left to see more of Italy, after a day by myself it seemed rather pointless leaving such good friends (& food) to have to worry where I was going to put my tent each night as the autumn weather deteriorated – so I returned to the vineyard. I ended up staying almost four weeks in total.

A day spent looking at Monto Bianco while we hiked.

If I ever got bored of the work in the vines, the scenery was always worth looking at and appreciating.

All of sudden October was free – so I hastily arranged for another visit to East Africa and close friends Adrian & Carmen, as it’s so much easier & cheaper to visit from London than NZ. Biking around Kilimanjaro was fantastic and we went up to Kenya to visit friends – the camping trip was unusual. I’m still not sure what scared me more – camping with ten children under the age of five or the injured lion we had resident in our campsite for much of the weekend.

Our lion friend for the weekend.

Back in England for November, it was a mixture of winter cycle touring saying goodbye to friends & family in the south & south-west and trying to pack my life up to move back to NZ. It was great to see so many people that have been a big part of my life for the last five or so years, sad to say goodbye of course.

As of December, I’m back in NZ – hopefully for good. For now, I’m enjoying the sudden change from northern winter to southern summer (if you think twenty-four hours in a plane counts as sudden), being with family – especially for Christmas, getting plenty of riding in (it’s easily been my biggest year on a bike ever – approaching 7000 km on my mountain-bikes [of which, I now only have one left – the big heavy touring one]), and generally reacquainting myself with life in NZ.

I’ll slowly start looking for a job in the new year, hoping to find one that means I can live in a large town/small city that has easy access to good mountain-biking – I think then there would be a chance I may be able stay still for a while and not spend so much time and money on travelling…

Thanks to all that were along for the ride (literal or figurative) this year – whether providing food, a bed, travel opportunities, quality mountain-bike rides or simply time. Merry Christmas & a great 2015 to all.

Africa, around home, bikepacking, bikes, Canada, combe raiders, Europe, family, friends, London, MTB, national park, roadtrip, snow, travel, UK, USA

Five and a half years

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Well, my bike is packed up in its bag again, most of my possessions were collected yesterday for shipping back to New Zealand and, really, I’m a bit bored of packing. I leave London for NZ – five and a half years to the week after I left to see a little bit of the world – curious if I can settle back in a beautiful country far at the bottom of the globe. At the least, I should get a good summer of riding in. Over dinner with Trish at our favourite local Italian pizzeria the other night, there was plenty to reflect on – many excellent things, only two or three not so great happenings, all memorable.

So excuse me while I try to remember most of them and jot them down for posterity. Naturally I’ll start with the highlights in no particular order, as there are many.

As I delve into the archives, this is proving more difficult to narrow it down than I expected, …

My first port of call was the States – little did I know that would be the first of four visits and about six months in total in the country, it turns out the west is fantastic for scenery and mountain-biking.

A west-USA road-trip with plenty of mountain-biking was always a pipe-dream for when I was in my forties or fifties – thanks to living in Canada & the company of my aunt, Valerie, it became a reality much earlier.

The best biking holiday was my return to Moab last year – fantastic trails, great company & beautiful scenery – click on the photo above to watch the video Megan put together.

I also never intended to visit Africa four times, but somehow that happened. Each of the four safaris were quite different, but all excellent.

But the first one in the Masai Mara was the best.

Seeing the Pyramids on Christmas day was excellent – not very crowded either.

I only briefly went to Asia, on a visit to Turkey:


Gliding over the spectacular landscape of Cappadocia in a hot air balloon is indelibly in my memory.

Five weeks’ vacation almost five years ago in the Canadian Rockies saw me learn to ski, a bit, and then all of a sudden, living in Bow Valley for a year of mountain-biking in the summer and skiing in the winter.


Returning to the UK, I managed to settle into a job that I quite liked – that was, until the rather horrible drawn-out experience of plant closure & many redundancies. It was a good base for travels near & far while it lasted – the long, dry & hot summer of 2013 was especially good with many mountain-biking trips around the south-west. Always good to visit Taunton & also ride with my Somerset riding buddies, the Combe Raiders – whatever the weather.

That summer saw me enter a few biking events too – a six-hour solo (nice trail, but boring riding round & round the same thing for six hours), a couple of marathon events, & culminating in my first multi-day stage event.

That event, as you can probably tell from this photo taken while riding along, was in Africa.

Apart from the redundancy experience already mentioned, only two other notable low-points are worth bringing up. The mugging incident in San Diego the day after I left NZ is still the best if I ever have to tell one story from my travels. The ongoing shoulder dislocation saga was painful in a different way – but after four dislocations I had surgery and it’s been fine ever since.

With all the trips to North America & Africa, I perhaps didn’t see as much of Europe as I originally hoped. But I managed a fair few trips – with Italy being the most visited country, five times now I think. I also loved the time spent living in London wandering around all parts of the city & delving into the history. Due to the demise of work, my bikepacking tour of western Europe was brought forward to this year & shortened (& then shortened even more when I got sick of travelling alone in the August rain & mud).

Straddling the German-Belgian border somewhere.

One of the most pleasing & proud parts of the trip was crossing the Alps over Great Saint Bernard Pass – because my grandfather did the same on a bike sixty-five years ago.

Somehow I ended up spending four weeks living & working on a small vineyard in the north-west of Italy – eating a lot, hiking a bit, making new friends & thoroughly enjoying myself. Learning a second-language, Italian – thanks to work, was something I never thought I’d do – but it turned out I really enjoyed it.

Hiking near Monto Bianco.

Oh, almost forgot the whirlwind two-week trip back to NZ (the only one) for some friends’ wedding, and coincidentally my thirtieth birthday & many celebrations with friends & family all over the country. Hectic, but most enjoyable.

The visit also coincided with my shoulder being declared fit – so after six months of no biking, it was great to be active again – here skiing near Wanaka.

I’ll be back with these fine folks next week – hard to believe we’ll have our first Christmas all together since 2006.

That’ll do for unashamed self-indulgence – thanks to all the family & friends that made all this possible in many different ways (usually providing somewhere to sleep & plenty to eat). Biggest thanks goes to cousin Trish in London for repeatedly opening up her home to this often-vagabond – all this would not have been possible or lasted nearly as long otherwise.