Category: #TourAotearoa
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A fine day: Eketahuna to Martinborough
It’s about 57 miles to ride from Eketahuna to Martinborough, with relatively little elevation gain at about 2,000 feet of climbing. In addition, we had a steady tailwind throughout the day which was great. We had about 1/3 on gravel roads so that slowed us down a bit but we still pulled into Martinborough around…
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“Kiwis are really nice people, until they get behind the wheel of a car!”
Leaving any urban area is hard. Traffic can be an issue, especially if you share a narrow road with minimal shoulders trafficked by heavy trucks and impatient cars, all of which we experienced leaving Palmerston North. Forty-five years ago when I was last in New Zealand, my friend Gary Adams remarked that Kiwis were really…
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Palmerston North
Since a lot of people follow this blog by getting email digests and don’t really see the comments, I wanted to share the following from Anna, a friend from Boulder, who commented that: “Did you hear that the garbage dump in Palmerston North is called Mt. Cleese? Because Monty Python’s John Cleese said: “If you…
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Along a river valley to Palmerston North
After having some coffee/tea and muesli in our cabin at Makoura, we coasted down the sweeping bends to the river level below, and then began the first big climb of the day. We were on gravel roads for about half the day, and so I deflated our tires to about 20 PSI before leaving to…
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Lots of sheep on (beautiful) endless hills
From Whanganui, we’ve headed basically due east, first stopping in a basic campground called Vinegar Hill in a picturesque turn of the river. The campground is run by the local council, with toilets, cold showers and water, but little else. It was a pretty long day at 45 miles and 3100 feet of climbing, and…
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Trail closed, river 5 meters higher, mud avoided!
We stopped in Taumarunui for a couple days, getting some needed rest after 4 days of pretty hard riding. We stayed long enough to occasionally pronounce the name of the town correctly but also made some people smile at how much we could stumble just describing where we had been and were planning to go.…
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Timber Trail Part 2: Camp Epic to Taumarunui
SUNSCREEN!! We actually are applying sunscreen this morning. The day dawned at least partly sunny and the forecast was for no rain for at least most of the day. As it turned out, it was correct! We had one small shower late in the day, but that was it. Not having to pack up a…
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Fabulous Timber Trail to Camp Epic
We woke in our little cabin at Pureoa Camp with rain steadily falling, had tea/coffee and breakfast and donned full rain gear for the day. We were going to start the Timber Trail, an 85km mountain bike trail through forest. It’s one of the jewels of this route, and we were looking forward to it.…
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The day started so innocently….
Today was one of those days that felt pretty simple as we took off this morning. Bypassing the twisty trail to leave Mangakino, we took the very lightly trafficked main road for a couple miles, then turning onto a succession of smaller paved and gravel roads, seeing basically no one along the way. It was…
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A super varied day: Arapuni to Mangakino
We left Arapuni Backpackers relatively early this morning, around 9AM, after a perfect breakfast of beans on toast for Chris and some muesli for me. The lady who owns the Arapuni Backpackers is really nice, and the place was clean and organized. That night, we ate some frozen food for dinner, which is for sale…