Category Archives: NZ

bikepacking, bikes, NZ

Clutha Gold Trail & Wanaka sojourn

Leave a comment

After the exhausting day on the Rail Trail I slept extremely well & reasonably late. More than pleased that I could fix myself porridge as the sun rose on another scorching, but windy, day the morning seemed to be filled with pottering and eating wonderful Central Otago summer fruit that was not in short supply.

Although I wasn’t really feeling like it, I was adamant I should put another decent ride in on successive days – eventually we settled on driving to the Clutha Gold Trail and riding a section out & back. One of the many cycle trail that seem to have sprung from nowhere while I was away for five and a half years as part of the NZ Cycle Trail network, this one runs seventy-three kilometres from Lake Roxburgh to Lawrence – mostly next to or near to the Clutha River. As the name suggests, gold-mining plays an important part in the history around the area – so there is frequent reference to it on the trailside information boards.

As the NWer was still very strong, we drove further south-east so as to start at Miller’s Flat & have the first part of our ride into the wind and have a tail wind on the return leg. Rachel (also house-sitting) was pretty sure she wouldn’t keep up with us, so we separated shortly after leaving Miller’s Flat. Linda pushed a pace that my tired legs and body couldn’t quite keep up with – & that was without all the luggage on my bike, but I fancy my bike was still substantially heavier than a carbon framed 29er. Miserable excuses, I was still tired – but happy to trundle along at my own manageable pace.

A short part of our ride first up was along the quiet road & then beside it on gravel trail until we were down to the riverside – twisting on the wide easy path through the trees.  There were plenty of glimpses of the bright blue-green Clutha making its way to the ocean – it’s NZ’s second biggest river with a very large catchment, so quite a bit of water slowly flowed past.

Amongst the trees, the wind wasn’t so bad & there were plenty of little changes of direction to break it up.  The trail is not as popular as the Rail Trail, but I found it more interesting as there is more greenery around and there is more variety in the trail direction and a few switchbacked climbs – the kind of thing you don’t get when following the path of a former railway.

The second half of the (about) thirty kilometres was more exposed to the strong wind & my speed slowed significantly.  Reaching the trailhead at the Roxburgh Dam (I had no idea that existed) we stopped for a snack and to snap a few pictures before turning and heading for the car – determined to stop at the information boards now that we had a tailwind.

The remains of a dredge that sunk in 1912 – it got over 3300 ounces of gold out of the riverbed between 1902 and 1906.

It was significantly faster returning, even with less effort expended pushing the pedals around – but still about getting a bit late in the afternoon by the time we got back to car to find Rachel patiently waiting and getting a bit cold. Empty bellies called for a good feed of fish ‘n chips in Roxburgh (after the earlier disappointment of Jimmy’s pie shop/bakery being closed on weekends) – the shop seemed to be the local meeting place for a Saturday night with all sorts dropping in. We were strongly encouraged to return the next day and enter a team in the inaugural Cherry Chaos event – which from what I could work out was completing an obstacle course while another team bombarded you with reject cherries, in the spirit of La Tomatina or the orange fight in Ivrea.

With that blasted NW gale sticking around into Sunday, we decided a day off bikes was a good idea; Rachel had organised to visit family in nearby Wanaka, so Linda & I tagged along to spend a few hours at the lakeside town. Somehow, the wind was even stronger there, coming off the lake – we felt sorry for the poor souls competing in a triathlon around the lake-edge. Still, we managed a walk up Mt Iron – where the forecast rain hadn’t quite rolled in & obscured the view – and plenty of delicious gelato and hot chocolates.

Looking west over Lake Wanaka to Mt Aspiring National Park.

South up the Coronet Valley.

East over the lower reaches of the Coronet River – it then flows into the Clutha just after that flows out of Lake Wanaka & is then joined by the Hawea River.

I’m not sure anyone slept all that well Sunday night as the winds reached a whole new level – at one stage the front door blew open, somewhat startling Maddie (the dog). The wind was supposed to change later in the day, but the forecasts were unspecific. I wasn’t keen to battle that again on the Rail Trail and given the choice of riding something new over 220 km that I’d ridden a few days previously – I preferred riding something new. Studying a map, I realised that Lawrence (the other end of the Clutha Gold Trail) is a lot closer to Dunedin than I thought (or not thought – I don’t know if I’d been to Lawrence before). Linda was keen to ride some distance with me, so a plan was hatched: drive back to Miller’s Flat again, ride the Clutha Gold south, stop at Beaumont for lunch, after which Linda would return north to the car & home and I’d carry on the Clutha Gold south to Lawrence & then over the hills hoping to eat & camp near Outram before returning to home the next day…

So that’s basically how it went. Another great thing about the upper reaches of the Clutha Gold is that it’s far from the highway & traffic noise – particularly the Miller’s Flat to Beaumont section. I think the section we did from Miller’s Flat south was my favourite of the whole trail – the only people we saw was a family on holiday in the area when we took a walk down to this restored bridge of a settlement long since gone on Horseshoe Bend (not nearly as impressive as the eponymous section of the Colorado).

The rain started shortly before Beaumont, so the camera stayed squirreled away for the rest of the day.

Escaping the rain we headed for the Beaumont Hotel – a classic NZ rural pub; I first thought that we’d eat in an otherwise empty bar, but they did a quite reasonable trade in the end. I thoroughly enjoyed my first Kiwi whitebait fritter in years, but I still had a long way to go to get to Outram (as well as having no idea just how big the hills were after Lawrence) – so bidding farewell to the pub and then Linda was necessary as the rain continued to fall. My suspicions that there was once a rail line along this valley (based on straight embankments and old bridge piles) were confirmed as signboards became a little more frequent & told me so and I climbed to the longest tunnel (about 400 m) I’d been through during the previous days – being straight, it was by no means the darkest.

The southerly change had come through (bringing the rain) and I worked against that to the end of the trail – thankfully, it wasn’t too strong. This part of the trail was not quite as enjoyable – partly due to the rain, but mostly due to the close proximity of the highway noise for much of it. The easy part of the day was completed at Lawrence and I marked the occasion with a disappointing pie at The Wild Walnut – more a strange triangular pocket of pastry with little meat in it than a proper pie. The rain had stopped as I headed north-east into the hills, hoping I’d make it to Outram by eight o’clock (it was just before four).

Quite soon I was heading up proper steep hills for the first time in days; surrounded by plantation forest, the only traffic was forestry workers heading home for the day in the opposite direction. The rain started again. Soon I was into open farming country, watching tussock slide by and passing the Bungtown Bog Scientific Reserve – what a great name! Previously I’d no idea these hills were even here, they were starkly beautiful in the early evening gloom as the storm rolled in. I continued, frequently dropping steeply & then having to climb again between about 400 and 500 metres above sea level. About the time Lake Mahinerangi (long & skinny – another hydro lake) came into view, the hail started, the temperature dropped and the thunder & lightning started. Although really chilly, I was pretty happy in the rain and quite sure I’d make it to the highway and civilisation again before hypothermia set in.

With another slow steep climb done, I was on the highway (pretty much deserted at that hour on a Monday night) and it almost stopped raining – but not quite. One more longish climb, a screaming downhill and some flat riding later I was in Outram to find the pub kitchen was closed. Damn. I was forced to ride to Mosgiel for dinner – then being so close to Dunedin and all the talk of the storm rolling this far east for the night, camping in a town sounded no fun at all & made little sense; Dad kindly came & picked me up to finish a long, challenging but enjoyable day exploring beautiful places new-to-me.

family, NZ, roadtrip, travel

Catlins & Southland Touring

2 Comments

The south of the South Island is somewhere my uncle, Geoff (visiting for a few weeks from Sydney), has not spent time on trips to NZ over the last thirty-five years. So a little road-trip was in order to have a look around – somehow I was persuaded to forgo bike riding for four days and go along. Persuasion wasn’t too difficult as I try to reacquaint myself with this country – and while I’ve visited the area before, I’ve not spent much time there.

So, I went along as driver and travelling buddy, happy to go wherever Geoff pleased & see some new things. It was quite nice for a change not to be setting the itinerary and pace – seeing all sorts of places, naturally some that I would not have seen if I was travelling solo. I did manage to rack a fair few miles over four days – a fair chunk on gravel roads, it’s not hard to end up in quite remote places that far south. We saw many different sights too – penguins, albatrosses, seals & sea lions, lighthouses, countless beautiful sandy beaches, waterfalls, great examples of native NZ bush, some iconic tourist sights, a little bit of history, thousand year old totara trees (I had no idea they lived for so long), NZ’s deepest lake and countless typical rural NZ scenes.

An excellent few days touring so close to home, the weather was generally fantastic (this part of the country doesn’t have that reputation) – I’ll let the photos tell the rest of the story.

We started with a short boat trip out of the Otago Harbour into the Pacific to see the wildlife around Taiaroa Head.

Strangely, this little blue penguin was not that shy – we watched it swim around in front of the boat for quite some time.

There were plenty of fur seals lounging on the rocks in the sun – once hunted almost to extinction for their skins, they’re doing much better now having been a protected species for over a hundred years.

Taiaroa Head is famous for having the only mainland breeding colony of royal albatross. At this time of the year, the breeding pairs are taking it in three to four day turns to incubate the large egg while the other is out at sea fishing. We saw many birds sitting on nests and this one spread its huge wings (on average they have a three metre wingspan) and soar off into the wind. Majestic.

After starting off on the Southern Scenic Route following the coast for a while, we stopped overnight in Balclutha.

The south of the South Island has been rather treacherous for shipping over the years – so we did see quite a few lighthouses. This one at Nugget Point.

More fur seals here; you can see how the coast could be problematic for any wayward ships.

At Surat Bay we could get pretty close to the world’s rarest sea lion – but not too close as weighing up to five hundred kilograms, they can get aggressive.

At Jack’s Bay, down another long gravelled road, we stopped to look at a large blowhole two hundred metres inland from the sea.

While it was an awful big hole in ground with the sea rushing in – I don’t think the tide was quite right to create the proper blowhole effect. Still, it was a nice coastal walk.

More gravel back-roads, and a short walk later we were at Purakaunui Falls – apparently some of the most photographed waterfalls in the world. Not particularly large, they are multi-tiered and quite pretty.

The McLean Falls were more impressive, at twenty-two metres high.

At Curio Bay we unsuccessfully tried to spot Hector’s dolphins playing in the surf. I stayed here with my family six years ago & we did see such sights.

But around the corner at the petrified forest, we did see a few yellow-eyed penguins – including this one coming out of the sea and heading to its nest at the end of the day.

 

Late in the day, we popped down to the southern most point of the South Island and tried our best not to fall off the cliff into a certain abyss.

Somehow, we found somewhere to stay in the tiny settlement of Tokanui.

After eventually finding some fuel in Invercargill (while I expected difficulty in finding a gas station in rural Southland, the dearth of gas stations in southern Invercargill was ridiculous) we headed out to Bluff and the end of State Highway 1 (it runs the length of the country).

Beautiful pohutakawa blossom.

West of Invercargill we headed out to Oreti Beach to have a very pleasant picnic lunch in the sun. You’re still able to drive down the beach – the scene of some of Burt Monro’s motorcycle exploits that gained more recognition in the film The World’s Fastest Indian.

On a wonderful summer’s day I was quite impressed with Invercargill – people that have lived there tell me it doesn’t deserve its reputation. But it is awfully flat there and a long way from anywhere & I’m not sure I could handle that.

At Gemstone Bay, the stunning beaches just kept coming – but the sea had taken any gemstones away.

Further around the coast, it started to get a bit more wild.

Another, once-typical, South Island crib (a holiday house, not particularly salubrious).

Tuatapere was a lot bigger than I remember from twenty years ago – we struck it in the middle of haymaking season with countless tractors and hay-wagons trundling past.

This is a what a thousand-year tree looks like apparently – always difficult to capture the grandeur of such in a closely packed forest.

After even more gravel road driving, we were in NZ’s largest National Park (Fiordland) looking across NZ’s deepest lake – Lake Hauroko, 462 metres deep. Suddenly, after the plains and small hills of Southland, there were mountains and the wilderness was starting to look inviting. While home to some of NZ’s Great Walks, unfortunately I don’t think there is much biking in the that particular wilderness.

We stopped to look at the Clifden Suspension Bridge – once it was NZ’s longest bridge; now that many years have passed and the Manapouri hydro power station has taken a lot of the Waiau River’s flow – it really does seem a big bridge in the middle of nowhere.

Now, there’s a house I could probably afford.

Last stop on our little tourist trail was some exploring in the Clifden limestone caves; we then hightailed it for home, scooting across Southland and Otago.

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

The Christmas Letter 2014

1 Comment

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.

bikes, family, MTB, NZ

Wanaka weekend

2 Comments

With the possibility of quite a few rides, I was easily persuaded to join Adele, her boyfriend James and another couple of their friends for a weekend camping near Wanaka – this being in the beautiful Southern Lakes area of the South Island. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t particularly play nice for the majority of the weekend – but it wasn’t so nasty that I didn’t manage five rides, even if they were on the short end of the scale.

First up, we stopped off en route in Alexandra to meet Garry so that Adele could have a bit of Canadian canoe practice for the upcoming adventure race. As I’ve been shuttled so many times in a car for mountain-bike rides, I was happy to play shuttle driver. In between dropping them off up the Clutha River near Clyde and picking them up downstream in Alex., I managed to get in a quick hour long ride up & back down the Anniversary track beside the same river. It was strange to have a time limit on a ride and quite fun to actually have to push the pace consistently to make sure I got there and back to meet them by the three-thirty deadline (which I did).

After much talking of gear for the adventure race, paddling techniques (there is also kayaking in the race), more of the delicious Christmas cake (from last weekend’s ride) and cups of tea we left Garry’s house for Wanaka. As we arrived much earlier than the others, we got in an evening lap of Dean’s Bank (a very nice little ten kilometre MTB track on the edge of the Clutha River just as it drains Lake Wanaka) before heading into town for dinner & last-minute camping supplies. Somehow my tent got up while it was still dry, about the time the others (Jacqui & Dan, with James) arrived the rain set in for the night. Late to bed, a couple of hours of riding obviously wasn’t enough to wear me out – I slept horribly.

I think we had the best of the weather on Saturday as we sat eating our bacon & eggs before all of us headed across the road to Dean’s Bank again. Very much the gooseberry with two couples, I had no qualms in leaving everyone to go their own pace while I had a bit of fun seeing how quickly I could get around the very enjoyable loop. Not content with just waiting for the others, I got in another two-thirds of a lap as the rain tried to start again. Lunch was by the lake (Wanaka) as we contemplated the grey clouds in the distance where we wanted to ride. In time, we resolved not to let the weather put us off and drove up to West Wanaka to start the ride to Minaret Burn.

Setting off near the lake, after having crossed the Matukituki River, there was one good steep climb to get our hearts going as we climbed above the water to what I’m sure are very nice views on a sunny day. Despite the gloom and rain, it was still beautiful country with rugged hills still displaying many different shades. Jacqui & Dan, somewhat sensibly, decided riding into rain and a stiff breeze wasn’t really for them and turned around. Less sensibly, Adele, James & I continued. Things leveled out a bit after the five-kilometre mark; but as we could see the trail switchbacking up a very steep & large hill and the rain showed no signs of easing I was informed we would be turning back before said hill. We’d been getting our feet even wetter than the rest of our clothes already were crossing streams, so when we got to a swollen river it was easy to turn around and avoid the swift, high water.

I tried to get a photo in the rain – not sure it was worth the effort; Wanaka township is down the far end of the lake, somewhere.

Even after the previous weekend’s epic, but equally fantastic, ride – Adele had not been put off asking Garry to organise another training ride. This time obviously we were looking in the Wanaka area for a big back-country outing. The DoC (Department of Conservation) office wasn’t particularly helpful, but Garry brought along a couple of other suckers-for-punishment. One of them, Phil, turned out to be even madder at choosing routes into the hills than Garry (I remember the words “it was easy in a four-wheel drive”). Starting near Lake Hawea, we pretty much climbed solidly for nine kilometres at an average of ten percent gradient. The surface was reasonable – I only had to walk about a hundred metres just after the gradient really kicked up as we left the valley floor and all the stream crossings.

With quite a bit of cloud around and the valley being quite close, the views weren’t nearly as expansive as last week – but it was a steep-sided dramatic valley we were slowly climbing out of. Phil was a fount of information about the area as he had been involved in the tenure review of this land in the last few years (a lot of high country in NZ is crown-owned, but given over to long-term leaseholders – every so often [not actually that often] this comes up for review with respect to conservation, land-use for farming, public access & so on).

Once we reached the conservation park (which had been handed over to DoC guardianship after the last tenure review) the trail quickly changed from the rough farm track to benched trail designed for mountain-biking and walking and the gradient eased off a bit. The changeable weather continued to do so and we were kept guessing as to what would happen. After more steepness on farm trail, as we approached a saddle the wind and rain was really blowing across. We sheltered from the wind to have lunch number two and tried to keep warm as the rain fell. Halfway through my sandwich, the rain stopped and my jacket started to dry out. When it was put to the group as to what we should do with respect to carrying on or not in the poor weather (the clouds were really blowing up & over the ridge), all was silent until I finally stated I was happy to keep riding – never a good idea for everyone else to stay quiet for so long.

With a bit more climbing to see what was around the next corner and how the different those clouds might look, we set-off. Of course, it wasn’t just one more corner we rounded – there were several as the view constantly changed and the weather abated for us slightly. At about the twelve kilometre mark, we could see the ridge track stretching off in the distance and the weather still looking rather poor – we all agreed it was time to turn around and meet our deadline to be back at the cars by four o’clock.

That’s what the clouds looked like around the corner, in case you were wondering.

The valley we climbed out of – trail on left hand side of photo, thankfully.

The descent surface was not nearly as gnarly as that which we ended last week’s ride on, but with all that climbing we’d done – it was great fun and fast. Except as the weather was a bit brighter, I kept stopping to take photos & wait for the others. For historical reasons, I’m told, we ditched the bikes briefly and walked a short distance to a peak to look over the plains and lakes below and marvel at how great the view must on a clear day.

We didn’t ride down there.

As we got off the ridge proper, the sun came out and it warmed up.

We all made it down in one piece, I had a complete blast on the downhill again (I really must get a job so I can justify getting a bike more suited to such things) and while not nearly as memorable in distance or views as the previous week’s Sunday ride it was an outing thoroughly enjoyable with good riding buddies. And most everything was loaded in or on the vehicles before the heavens opened again.