Today was supposed to be a rest day at the lovely Braemar Station, but we dioecious to cruise up to the lake head as it looked like a nice scenic cycle path. We are now on the official Alps to Ocean trail, and it is well marked in the whole and we are seeing alot more cyclists. It might get busy! The clouds didn’t lift off the top of my cook salt but it was a stunning day, and ended up being about a 50 km ride.
We went for a walk up the hill at our Doc campsite, and found this amazing fungus alongside the track.
Stu is looking very colourful with his found foam handle bar grips. They work well apparently
An exhausting 70 km uphill hour day, finally we are at the beautiful serene Lake Alexandrina. It’s about 8 km out of the overly busy lake tekapo, and we have a lakeside grassy Spot all to ourselves
The first part of day 5 was gorgeous. Amazing to be cruising into MacKenzie country. The weather cleared and we had the Southern Alps in front of us most of the way. Quiet stunning gravel ride.
Just before we reached Pioneer Park (near Fairlie) we noticed this amazing herd of deer watching us warily and taking fright. Drumming of hooves
Boxing day was a wet day. Misty, wetting drizzle, that wet us on the outside, and clammy sweaty condensation on the inside of our very good coats. We were drenched. Tired and cold. Finally we arrived at the Waihi Gorge DOC campsite. It was still raining. We were huddled under the very small shelter, getting psychologically prepared to put up the tent when a local couple arrived, having sympathetically followed us to invite us home with them for dinner and hosting us in thier sleep out. Thank you to Jo and Jane! Such a fabulous night of sharing adventures and learning about Hereford Farming from Rob and Maryanne (James parents were staying as well), discussing art, existential physics and Buddhism and then A VERY comfortable sleep. Here’s a photo of thier amazing verge garden and Benny the gorgeous red dog
Our navigation app Komoot took us down a gravel road to an unexpected river crossing which was uncross able… Resulting in a 10 km detour. Very sad. It was raining ALOT.
It became apparent we could not ford the river (Stu insisted on wading knee deep into the fast brown river in 3 places to check if it was possible… But ER… No! thank goodness, Though it did mean an extra 10 km to the proper bridge)
We had a welcome lunch stop on a bridge and made use of the tripod
Avery step climb out of the Rakaia Gorge which had me trailing behind and Stu reading his ebook at the top waiting for me….
Very fast downhill. Yikes. Now eating HUGE melting moment Biscuits with our morning coffee. Yum. We will need the energy for the climb out of the gorge
Up early on Christmas Day for an imperceptible uphill to Rakaia and then an impressive downhill into the gorge.
Met a French Canadian couple going the same way and similar style of traveling
A relaxing morning tea with coffee and a melting moment that we saved from the day before and then a hard climb up out of the gorge. A quarter of the way up someone gave us a gingerbeer for our achievement, but the rest of the climb was tougher and longer.
We decided to get a cabin at mount somer instead of camping cause it looked like heavy rain. In the end it was just a few raindrops but that at the cabin it did rain more.
We’re both tired but feeling good after our first day biking 65 km from Christchurch to Glentunnel. Lots of long straight roads, open fields with huge irrigation systems, and several stretches of fast traffic coming up behind us. Now we have a lovely quiet camping spot, enjoying getting clean (50 cents for 4 minutes of hot water, bliss) and about to cook dinner.
It’s all coming back to me now… Food tastes sooo good when you hane been cycling. We just found this lovely cafe in Darfield that had amazing pies and cakes. Mine was buttered chicken and Stu smokey beef and jalapeños. Best best
Phew, quite a challenging business to get us all on the plane! Not helped by the security guy declining our lovely lite weight brand new pedal spanner. So I had to jog back to luggage handling, retrieve one of the bikes that had been checked in already, tape it inside the box and then recheck it in and jog back thru security. Minutes to spare…. No time for koru club 😢😢
