Skip to main content

Day 1. Turangi

It’s always going to be difficult to make the road transport sound interesting. Feeling pleased that we weren’t setting off in Monday’s storms it was quite a cruisy ride to Turangi. The idea being just to get under way and perhaps a little more honestly, to split the Wellington trip as there are only so many hours one can sit on the plank. 
Entertainment was provided by New Zealand’s national summer sport, road works. All of course kept safe by 10000000 road cones. I think they breed in the night. 
Got to Turangi to receive a text from Jennie “did you know your registration expired last year?”  The answer is no. Good start. 
Tomorrow we will cross over to the South Island. Given it took the ferry 12 hours to cross yesterday we are expecting a millpond Cooks Straight! From there the trip starts in earnest with a couple of days riding on Mount Gladstone station in the inland Kaikoura range. But that’s for another day. 
Just a few photos along the route today and our little bikes tucked away. Only 2 bikes. We have lost the other 2 but hopefully we all appear in Blenheim tomorrow. https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1_Y7iQWYcfVi-sIabeCU7M7cCbtKordJkhttps://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1dGOJ_EYWGyFLRTPFGXYZ0kEh5gzRNcQYhttps://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1n_xflEDHdPTicaeZdGCPWDNjXmSsh0sB

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 6: Waikaia

Naseby and Ranfurly are separated by 12km of straight road. If one is uncertain of where to go, there is a large mountain range behind Naseby that could serve as a land mark, visible from pretty much anywhere. So you might be surprised that the 3 world adventurers, all equipped with gps, managed to take about 40 minutes to find it. I could explain but it’s too painful. Once we did find Naseby we climbed up into the Hawksdun range on the Mt Buster track. This was always going to be a highlight for me with a big climb followed by a flowing double track full of hole and erosion mounds designed to play with. Dropping down into several crossings of Guffies creek and then the upper reaches of the Otematata river I was feeling quite vindicated in spending the children’s inheritance and education fund on the 500exc adventure project.  From there we climbed to over 1500m on Johnston’s creek track and the moonscape that is the top of the Hawksduns. Huge country. It’s both beautiful and intim...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 11: Homeward bound

The final day of our trip lived up to my hopes. Last year we were unable to do the Rainbow road and so I was quite keen to do this 100km road from Hanmer to St Arnaud. I first heard of it 20 years ago when they used to run a mountain bike race along its length. It fully exceeded my expectations for both incredible beauty as well as fun riding that seemed to get better the further north we went. The coffee stop at Lake Tennyson  must be one of the better settings on the trip. Perfect weather to round it off.  Beyond that a bit of melancholy as we approach our return to real life, balanced for me by looking forward to catching up with Jennie and the boys.  So it is time to finish the final episode of one of the best trips of my life, which is setting the bar high as I have been fortunate to have had some good ones indeed.  Thanks to Dave Lear who helped plan the trip. Many hours of pondering what has been a big project, from being prepared to also buy a KTM 500exc and ...
1 comment
Read more

Prologue

I carry nicknames for my riding mates in my head. One of them is Dakar (insert name). The other two are  You can’t be serious? (Insert name) and Oh for fucks sake! (insert name). I’m sure by the end of our Return to the South 2021 you will understand. I really do love them. It is human nature to strive for improvement. To react to past experience is the fundamental driver of evolution. With this spirit of advancement in mind we took stock of last years Mainland adventure and decided to improve on it.  Given that last years trip was pretty awesome it was always going to be difficult to make it better but at least we can try! The KTM 690 that we rode last year was the perfect all rounder for what we wanted to do but in the more technical off road sections I still felt like an even smaller bike would be more fun. The KTM 500exc is a pure enduro bike capable of handling any off road terrain that one is prepared to tackle. It consists of a motor, wheels, brakes and suspension and a...
Post a Comment
Read more