Category: Bike Touring
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This path ends…on to the next!
Christchurch is the largest city in South Island, with about 450,000 people, a bit more than 1/3 of the total population of South Island. And it’s the place I’ll be flying from to Brisbane. It’s a shock to be in a real city after being mostly in the sticks. I stayed 4 nights here in…
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Last 2 days into Christchurch
Perhaps it was that I wanted to drag out the last 2 days coming to my departure point. Or maybe it was that the rain and cold was pointing out that staying put for a couple days was a good idea. In any case, from a distance perspective I could have easily ridden faster and…
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Mt Somers and Glentunnel: Fall is coming!
Since I took a bus to Geraldine from Queenstown following my adventure ending in the helicopter evacuation, I had about 200 miles less riding to get to Christchurch compared with my original plan. And so, I’ve been going slower – riding about 40 miles every other day and staying a couple days in small towns…
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Onwards towards Christchurch…slowly.
After spending a night with Chris and Jay in Queenstown, we all left for our respective destinations the following day: Chris to Brisbane, Jay back to Boulder and me to Geraldine, a town that we had stayed in once before by car, and also on the Sounds to Sounds route that I was following back…
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Final thoughts on getting stranded and evacuated
I posted to the Sounds to Sounds Facebook group about my experience as soon as the helicopter dropped me in Wanaka. I wanted to warn others that rain could make the stream crossings impassable and dangerous. I wasn’t sure if others would all know something I didn’t, but I figured it would be helpful. It…
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Evacuation by helicopter: what a day!
While Chris goes to Australia and Jay goes home, I planned to ride from Alexandra, south of Queenstown, to Christchurch before flying back to Brisbane for Easter with Katherine, Andrew and Chris. And so, I planned to ride the Sound to Sound route, planned by the same people who planned and mapped the TA which…
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Milford Sound, and a winery on the way out
Leaving Cromwell, we took the opportunity to stop at Cloudy Bay winery and do some tasting and a lunch. It was fabulous….like being invited to a very rich friend’s house with an army of gardeners and an awesome cellar. Honestly, the wine was not all that special but the experience was great. We had everything…
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Lake Dunstan Bike Trail
Since way before we came to NZ, I ran across a video of the Lake Dunstan Bike trail. It is part of the “Great Rides” of NZ, and it’s gotten a lot of press since being finished a couple years ago. Last year, 7,500 people were expected to ride it. 87,000 did. So, it’s a…
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To Bluff! A chapter finished…
Starting on January 15, 57 days ago, we took a bus from Auckland to Kaitaia and cycled to Ahipara, where we would start this adventure. For these 2,700km (1,680 miles) climbing about 30,000 meters (97,000 feet), we’ve been aiming ourselves to Bluff. Along the way, we’ve seen many sides of NZ, much of it that…
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Mossburn to Invercargill: almost to the bottom!
We are on the last push to the end. We did our second consecutive day of over 100 km, which we had never done before. Some of it is that we are generally going downhill from Mossburn to Bluff (Invercargill is about 20 miles from Bluff), and also that we are so close that we…