Category Archives: NZ

bikepacking, bikes, family, NZ

Bikepacking to Waikanae over the Rimutaka Cycle Trail

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The rest of my plan to visit family on the outskirts of Wellington involved leaving Martinborough after an early breakfast and riding to Waikanae over the Rimutakas and then the Akatarawas. From Martinborough it was flat roads for over twenty-five kilometres with a helpful wind at my back.

My route over the hills involved getting back on the Rimutaka Cycle Trail – a long established rail trail, I knew this wasn’t going to be too steep. However, the eastern side is much steeper than most railways – there was some fascinating rail history to read about trailside as the hills were not conducive to ordinary steam engines. Instead, up the steep Rimutaka Incline, Fell Engines had to be used as the gradient for three miles was one in fifteen. The Fell system was the first to use a third rail for braking or traction – wheels were pressed horizontally on either side of the centre rail when required. This steepness of the trail made it slightly harder work than a normal rail trail – but nothing compared to what I’d been riding recently, so it was nice to not be only very gradually climbing.

I wound my way up, stopping to read the interesting information panels and look out across the rugged hills lined with native bush. The day warmed and was quite humid, but the going was hardly tough. A few tunnels on the trail provided relief from the humidity and bright day – I was glad I had my light for the almost-six hundred metre long Summit Tunnel. From there it was, of course, a long gentle downhill (the Fell system wasn’t used on the western side of the Rimutakas as the gradient was easier) and as I approached the highway I began to come across a few day-trippers on foot or bikes.

After a brief spell on the highway, I was happy to see the only shop of the day & stopped for a pie and some crisps and wondered how long it would take me to get over the Akatarawas. Home of the longest running mountain-bike event in the Southern Hemisphere, the Karapoti Challenge, (which I’ve done a couple of times, before I went overseas), I knew these hills were big and demanding. But this time I was just riding the road to get to the Kapiti Coast – a skinny, twisty road that plenty of people warned me would be no fun on a bike with the traffic to deal with. As it turned out, it was a very pleasant ride – none too steep, consistently climbing, very little traffic in the middle of a sunny day and more native forest to look at and hide in the shade of.

The view from the summit wasn’t quite as spectacular as I’d been hoping.

Defying all Google predictions, I was in Waikanae within six hours of leaving Martinborough without really working that hard at all. It was fun to catch up with my aunt Trish and see her new place – she’s recently made a big move south and is now much closer to her daughters and their grandchildren. It was a little odd seeing my cousin Anna after about fifteen years, but well worth it & enjoyable. Thinking two sub-hundred kilometre bikepacking days in a row was a little poor, I rode up State Highway One and back again (not a particularly enjoyable experience – I never felt in danger, but the traffic is just so loud & unpleasant) to visit school-friend Kelly and meet her daughter – things have changed a fair bit for Josh & Kelly since I saw them in London last.

The following day, not wanting to ride noisy highway all the way back to Wellington, I caught the train back. I was surprised to be impressed by a NZ rail service – but it was new, clean, prompt & with plenty of room for bikes. Before long I was back in Karori watching the few days of clear weather disappear (I timed my little visiting cycle tour well) as the clouds, wind & rain rolled in.

bikepacking, bikes, family, MTB, NZ

Bikepacking Wellington to Martinborough – The Coastal Route

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Visiting family in the area was a big reason for having a rest week in Wellington following my Kiwi Brevet effort/ordeal. I soon realised that both Martinborough and Waikanae are not really that far from the capital and there was no point in taking a car on the inter-island ferry – I could just take my bike and ride to visit my uncle and aunts and save more than two hundred dollars in doing so.

First port of call was David and Antoinette in Martinborough – who I hadn’t seen since my cousin Sasha’s (their daughter) wedding in Tuscany in 2008 (thinking about it, that wedding and the resulting trip may be the biggest reason for this website). I’d thought that I’d have to ride the Rimutaka Cycle Trail both ways from & to Wellington – but a quick bit of research showed a coastal route may be possible. Always keen for a bit of variety, I set out on that route on a glorious Wellington day – at a shade under a hundred kilometres and with a ferry ride across the harbour, I was fit and recovered enough from the brevet to attempt it.

Near the end of the morning peak, I rolled down the hills from Karori to Queens Wharf to catch the ferry to Days Bay.

I had to wait a while for the end of the morning rush to pass – the ferry approaches the berth.

Crossing the harbour, the swells were a lot kinder than my Cook Strait crossing three days beforehand.

The crossing was pleasant, short and uncrowded – as this early on a weekday morning most are heading into Wellington for the day, not out of Wellington for a day of fantastic biking. The Days Bay ferry, while small, easily takes bikes (for free) – but at the Days Bay end be warned that the gangway is from the upper deck; it’s difficult to get a loaded bike up the stairs at the stern of the vessel.

From the wharf at Days Bay.

Riding through Eastbourne the road very quickly ended and I was left to follow the coastal path – really just gravelled double-track. At times the path passed through private land, but the signage was rather ambiguous. In the end I decided that as walking or cycling was not expressly prohibited, it must be OK if you kept to the trail – but motorised vehicles were not welcome.

Quickly, I came across the Pencarrow Lighthouses – which are rather small. The views back across the harbour to Wellington were just grand and off in the distance I could see the South Island. The day was strangely calm so far, so that was enjoyable while it lasted.

While one could look back and see Wellington only ten or so kilometres away, I was surprised at how remote the area felt – there was the odd cyclist or walker, but not for long. I was excited to again be out exploring a place I’d never been  so soon after the brevet and generally loving life and a relatively unloaded bike (with no camping gear, I had such luxuries as normal clothes to change into – jeans!).

That hill directly above the stake in the ground was about the only climbing for the first half of the day – the going was pretty easy and very beautiful.

Looking back to the city from that little hill.

Suddenly, I was on a sealed road for a brief interlude to the bottom of the peninsula – even that looked good.

As the road ended, the Rimutaka Cycle Trail started, or ended – I was on the right track.  I rounded a corner and suddenly I was looking across Palliser Bay to Cape Palliser – the southern-most point of the North Island.  Also about that time I found that I had in fact been sheltered from a stiff nor-easter so far and the trail condition started to deteriorate – that was no bad thing as it slowed me down and I had a stunning vista to admire.

There were quite a few times when I had to get off and walk my bike – particularly when crossing shingle fans. That is where all the rocks washed down from the hills have really spread out creating said fan. The only people I saw for some hours were in two large 4WDs and they had a really tough job crossing all the rocks – I was happy to walk.

It was feeling rather remote, rugged and windswept around here.

Occasionally, the trail climbed to skirt some hills – often with signs of the side of the trail having crumbled into the sea. The trail was living up to its name – Wild Coast Trail.

At last, there were signs of a settlement with a collection of baches (a bach is a traditional NZ holiday home – usually rather simple affairs, cobbled together with whatever was available and near a beach of some sort). Judging by the cradles that these fishing boats were on and the tractor units used to move them it must be a long, rough beach.

Dozers, really? Who uses ancient dozers to launch boats?

And I’ve seldom seen such large tyres on boat cradles or such a long drawbar.

A few baches – the word is thought to originate from bachelor, as in bachelor pad. At least, that’s how I remember it.

I joined the road west of Lake Ferry and continued inland, north-east (into the wind). Stopping for lunch on the roadside, I finally had the can of tuna and finished the box of crackers I’d been carrying since Arthurs Pass – before the halfway point of the brevet, not that well thought out that.

Leaving the Rimutaka Cycle Trail as it continued north, I loosely followed the Ruamahanga River on sealed road all the way to Martinborough passing the site of the first sheep station in the country and numerous vineyards. Not quite as exciting as the coast, it was all very nice and I’d had a great day’s outing. But the fun wasn’t over as I visited David and Antoinette’s house for the first time in probably a decade – there were many adventures, holidays (past & present) and family news in general to catch up on over a barbecue dinner and a few drinks on the sun-soaked verandah.

I thoroughly recommend the route around the coast from Eastbourne to Lake Ferry – it would be easy to link it with the rest of the Rimutaka Cycle Trail to make a big day of it.  The only qualifier I’d put on that, is make sure you chose a day of not-awful weather.

bikepacking, bikes, event, GPS, MTB, NZ

Kiwi Brevet 2015 – My Day Seven

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Overnight rain had passed through and after a good sleep it was a leisurely start to Friday. With a large civilised breakfast around a table, it was after eight o’clock before Oliver and I pedaled out of Tapawera. Before long we were riding through more boring plantation forest, cresting the hill and rolling down to Wakefield – at least we found a lot of ripe blackberries on the roadside. With a day and a half to do only 240 km, we were taking plenty of stops. It warmed up some and as we came to cross the main road we got stopped in our tracks by a large procession of hot rods – it was Waitangi Day (NZ’s national day) so a lot of people were out and about.

Thankfully the store was open late morning on a public holiday, so it was a stock up for lunch and my seventh and last pie in five days. The large bag of salt & vinegar crisps I bought required some creative stowing – eventually they ended up stuffed down my shirt; ready access – brilliant. I had hoped the Taste (cycle) Trail into Nelson would provide plenty of opportunities to sample local food and wines – disappointingly, it didn’t. In fact it was quite boring; but it was flat, smooth and fast and we were in Nelson to have a brief rest beside a small river in the shade. That break was supposed to be lunch, but we’d eaten too much in Wakefield.

Somewhere along the way we’d got to deciding that it would be cool to finish the course in less than seven days – that would mean being back in Blenheim by ten o’clock Saturday morning. Instead of camping the night at Aussie Bay along Queen Charlotte Drive, we would instead get to Picton that night and see if we wanted to go much further. If Picton was the overnight stop, that would only leave sixty-five kilometres and about four hours’ riding the next morning. I was starting to get a bit bored with the scenery so was wondering if I might be able to push through the night to finish – also pitching a tent for only few hours seemed a waste of riding time.

Leaving Nelson up the Maitai Valley was all very pleasant as we passed some big parks with plenty of people out enjoying the warm weather. Fortuitously, as we hit a nasty nasty climb the clouds started to roll in from the west and it wasn’t nearly as hot and uncomfortable as it could have been. The ascent of the Maungatapu was more than enough unpleasantness without sweltering in harsh sunlight. Once again, as on Day Five, it took two hours to go ten kilometres – but this time there was a unrelenting six hundred metres of vertical gain to also be earned. This was mostly pushing, but at least a higher proportion was rideable (just) than Porika Road the day before.

The only photo of the day – looking back towards Nelson from the saddle.

With not too much cursing, we attained the saddle to see the only person for hours, a young guy wandering around with a rifle – brilliant. After a brief chat it was a fast, fun & rocky descent to Pelorus Bridge. Just as we popped into the DOC campsite office to fill water bottles, the big cloud that had been chasing us since Nelson unrelentingly dumped rain as we sheltered near the cafe. Thankful to have avoided that, we waited it out and hit the highway to Havelock. We’d both been craving hot chips for a while, so finding the grocery store closed we headed to a chippie and stocked up on delicious chips.

Out of Havelock was the most tired I felt all day, I struggled along for half an hour or so until we left Pelorus Sound. Reaching the very top of Queen Charlotte Sound, near The Grove jetty, was the dead-cert highlight of the day – and easily the wildlife viewing moment of the week. Initially we rode past a bunch of tourists stopped on the side of the road, as tourist are want to do, before thinking there might be something to see. There definitely was – in the low light of the evening one could just make out a faint disturbance in the water’s surface between some boats anchored fifty metres off shore.

Gradually, a large pod of quite sizeable dolphins came towards us spending more and more time above the water. They came in quite close to the jetty and as they kept going in & out of the water it was difficult to work out how many there were – I think about fifteen. It was one of those majestic memories that will have to stay in my mind as my camera was buried deep due to the heavy shower earlier. The rest of the day seemed quite boring in comparison.

It was only another fifteen-odd kilometres to Picton around the edge of the sound as night closed in and we tried our best to not be hit by slow-driving tourists. We’d decided to keep going & see how far we might make it – if too tired, we’d simply camp somewhere. Thus Picton was our last chance to stock up for the night-ride ahead; after finding the only eating places in town open were bars and restaurants we went towards the main ferry terminal – I’ve never been so happy to see a Subway open. Foot-longs devoured it was about ten o’clock before we left Picton for the last sixty-five kilometres to Blenheim via Port Underwood and the coastal road.

I’d been well warned that this was a rather hilly route and would take hours – also, Oliver had toured it not so long ago. It persistently rained upon leaving Picton for about ninety minutes – until the top of the biggest remaining climb (crossing from Waikawa to Port Underwood). We managed to grind out all the climbing, the quick downhills were freezing in night and the about twenty-five kilometres of gravel road was in pretty poor condition. With quite a few stops to snack, put on a layer or take layers off (it was quite warm going up the hills) I was pleasantly surprised by my ability to keep pushing the pedals around, however slowly, as it was soon the early hours of Saturday morning. It’s nice to do something completely mad every so often.

Finally we were out of the hills after forty kilometres that took over four hours (that is proper slow on the road) – it was probably good that darkness concealed all but what was immediately in front of us. I couldn’t see how big the looming hills were or just how awful the road surface was. On the plains back to Blenheim the sky finally cleared and as the roads were straight and progress was much easier, Oliver started to get a bit sleepy – understandable as it was about three o’clock by this stage.

Eventually, we were back in Seymour Square in Blenheim at 3.40 to absolutely no fanfare – as you’d expect, there wasn’t even a passerby or stray dog to witness our achievement at this time of the day. So that was that – 1150 km around the upper South Island in seven days less four hours. Naturally I was pleased to finish and with the achievement; dog-tired, I was almost just as pleased at how well we’d come through what turned out to be a twenty-hour day to cover 240 km with one bloody big hill in the middle and then multiple smaller steep climbs in the dead of the night. What a great event and I got to see so many new things!

Back to Doug & Shirley’s I found we’d been locked out, so had to pitch my tent anyway. With a few solid hours kip on the lawn, we were up in time to make it to a fun nine o’clock breakfast sharing campaign stories with a few of those riders we’d seen quite a bit of the previous days and who’d finished at a sensible hour the evening before.

Footnote:

I had enough time the following day before catching the ferry from Picton to Wellington to drive the rugged Port Underwood road in the daylight and appreciate the views we missed at night and see just how big the hills were. I’m not sure how we made it through in the dark – probably not being to see the challenges helped. It was hard enough to drive in a 4WD! At times the road was so steep and corrugated that the rear tyres would not grip and I had to put the truck into 4WD. Goodness knows what we were thinking riding through that after already having spent fifteen hours riding that day!

Picton was looking much nicer in the sunshine too:

I suspect this Chevy is carrying one of the Model Ts that was in Blackball just before us a few days previously.

bikepacking, bikes, event, GPS, MTB, NZ

Kiwi Brevet 2015 – My Day Six

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To make up for the early rain-induced finish the previous day, Oliver and I managed to collect all the various clothes drying around the room and hit the road just after five o’clock. It was a cool morning rolling through the dark – Oliver seemed to take perverse pleasure in giving me updates on the low temperature from his GPS.

After an hour or so we were on the highway for a brief stretch, the day lightened and we turned off again and climbed through more native forest to Mariua Saddle. The two groups of riders that had stayed the night further down the road than us at Mariua caught us around here, annoyingly raving about the motel we didn’t stay in, and stuck in our general proximity to Murchison. Following the Matakitai River through more forest and then dairy farms, pleasingly we weren’t flattened by a milk tanker steaming through.

With a big refuel stop at the Murchison Four Square (nine-thirty is not too early for a big meat pie – not when you’ve already had a bacon and egg one for breakfast before five o’clock) we took our time repacking for the warming day and all the food we’d just bought – plenty of familiar faces rolled into town as we trundled out. Up the wonderfully named Mangles Valley, it was back on to gravel up a small saddle and dropping down to Lake Rotoroa in Nelson Lakes National Park – where I took my only photos of the day.

Lake Rotoroa – I’ve finally seen it, it wasn’t very exciting.

We’d been warned about the Porika Rd climb that was our route away from the lake and back to State Highway 63 by other competitors and people on the street in Murchison who seemed to gleefully delight in our impending torment. It was a pretty hard slog – a shade under five kilometres, seventy minutes of mostly pushing up a 4WD track to climb five hundred metres. But we made it with a bit of work and a few stops to look at the views and were rewarded with what was probably the highlight of the day – another big downhill on reasonable rough track through forest to the road.

That I only got photos at one point of the day, probably reflects the fact that this was the least interesting of event for me. There was no singletrack and it just felt like miles for miles sake – I was getting to the stage of just wanting to finish, but there was still three hundred kilometres to go. Then we reached the Buller River and followed it downstream for a while. Unfortunately as the valley narrowed, the nice tailwind we’d had in the morning funneled ever stronger straight into our faces. Progress was so slow and tough (at times I looked down to see I was going a measly eight kilometres an hour – pedaling downhill!) it was ridiculous to the point of being funny.

Thankfully that only lasted half an hour and we turned to ride up the Hope River Valley a little, before branching off into rather boring forestry (plantation forestry = boring; native forest = beautiful and interesting) to Tadmor Saddle and dropping down to the hop growing area around Tadmor – an indication we were getting into Tasman and nearing Nelson. Oliver was struggling to stay awake on this section and I was a little worn out too – so when we came across a charming little campground in Tapawera (I’d never heard of it, either), it was pretty easy to call it a day. That left us with two hundred and forty kilometres to go – an easy day and a half to get back to Blenheim sometime after noon on the Saturday, which had been my vague goal the whole way around. When we found the campsite had a fully equipped kitchen we were strangely excited – we could cook for ourselves! A five hundred gram packet of pasta was finished there.