We left the last blog ‘on the way home’ – having reached Bluff at the bottom of New Zealand’s South Island (well, its famous bottom but not the absolute geographical bottom!) Bluff is a long long way from home but since ‘turning round’ we have to confess to not having been taking the most direct route! Instead, we’ve enjoyed making the most of NZ’s awesome off road cycle trails (or ‘Great Rides’) to wend our way northwards. Sort of.
Note – despite the blog title and our general enthusiasm for Great Riding (TM), we’re not being sponsored by NZ Tourism (yet).
The Catlins
First up was actually not an off road route or trail – but a couple of days road riding through the Catlins in the southeastern corner of NZ. Home to loads of beautiful coastline, some of the world’s rarest penguins, lots of rolling hills and unfortunately for us – a lot of wind!
The tailwind we had enjoyed southwards was a thing of the past as we spent one day in particular being buffeted by particularly crazy sidewinds which I found (almost) uncycleable. At one point Matt (and bike) fell over whilst standing on the side of the road waiting for me! Our afternoon and evening at Curio Bay was also not the highlight we had been hoping for. It was really cold and the sheltered spot we pitched our tent in turned out to not be sheltered when we went back to the tent from the camp kitchen as the wind had spun around and was threatening to rip up our little home! Given we couldn’t take it down/move it (not sensible, because of the wind) Matt improvised and collected up all the wheelie bins he could find and created a state of the art wind defence system, with buttresses of wheelie bin supporting towers of wheelie bin. It worked!
Luckily things had calmed down a little the next day so we made it to Balclutha further up the coast and a bit inland for a two night stay and rest day. This was a complete change of scene from the creaking tent – we lucked out bagging ourselves a three bedroom house for our stay! Denis at the campsite in Balclutha didn’t have a cabin available at the site (we had reserved one over the phone due to the forecast rain and more wind coming) – but he did have a house instead for the same (bargain) price. We were delighted and made the most of having a house, even if just for short time.
Clutha Gold Trail and the Roxburgh Gorge
Rejuvenated from Balclutha we made our way inland and joined the Clutha Gold Trail, a mainly rail trail wending its way inland alongside the Clutha river. This was a joy to cycle – the gravel wasn’t too deep, the gradients not too steep, the views pleasing and our camping spot midway at the Beaumont Hotel midway was lovely. Plus the weather decided to improve – finally!
The Clutha Gold joins on to another trail at Roxburgh Dam – a slightly more challenging but shorter trail which goes right through the Roxburgh Gorge, popping out at Alexandra in Central Otago. We were excited for this one – but there was just one small problem. In typical NZ Great Ride style, part of the official trail actually involved taking a jet boat (to join one dead end into the gorge to another, about 13km upstream). Despite spending quite some time on our day off in Balclutha doing trip admin, this had involved planning for our next stage, post NZ. And not arranging a jet boat for the day after next, which was probably what we should have been doing!
No bother, we got in touch with the jet boat operator in the morning and were told the last boat went at 1.30pm. We found this out at about 9.30am which normally would be fine for getting 60km ‘done’, but all of that distance was going to be off road, including the more technical riding of the first part of the Roxburgh Gorge. Of course, we booked it, and proceeded to speed cycle our little legs off to make the boat in time. Which we did, with 15 minutes to spare. In good news, this meant I had no time to think about what a jet boat ride was actually going to be like and get anxious about it.
As we were the only passengers on the boat (most people do the trail in the opposite direction), the really good news was that it was really (really) good.
A bit scary (particularly the 360 degree spins which Dave our jet boat pilot enjoyed almost as much Matt) but totally epic and super interesting to see the gorge from the water, and learn more about the history of the area which is closely connected to the discovery of gold here in the 19th century. All of which occurred with our bikes hanging over the back of the boat!
We both considered this one of, if not THE best day of the trip at the time… until…
The Lake Dunstan Trail
… the next day which was an out and back ride from Alexandra to Clyde and onto Bannockburn via the Lake Dunstan Trail, yet another Great Ride. The photos say it all – but I think Matt went to heaven on this ride. No bags and just endless stunning scenery coupled with some steep ups and downs, narrow drop offs, cantilevered platforms out into the lake and a great surface to ride on.
The only challenge (apart from some of the riding!) was that most other people were cycling the trail in the opposite direction to our ‘out’ which meant that we spent the morning squeezing past A LOT of day riders, most of whom were on rental e-mountain bikes and I’m afraid to say many of whom were potentially not skilled enough to be on this sort of trail.
However, once we’d had our sandwiches and then a coffee at the winery at Bannockburn (OK and a glass of wine, to share – very restrained) we turned back onto the trail which was by now completely deserted. We had it to ourselves, which with a tailwind really was heaven.
A very satisfying ride, particularly for me as without the bags I realised that my strength and technical skills have really improved from all of the off road riding we’ve been doing. Clearly part of Matt’s quite extensive grand plan to get me into gravel riding when we get home (it’s working…)
Central Otago Rail Trail
Yes there are even more trails! Next up, starting in Clyde and finishing in Middlemarch is the original Great Ride and NZ’s first rail trail. I was ready for less adrenaline and more ‘easy’ cycling and the Central Otago served this up – with stunning cycling through the incredibly dry but beautiful countryside of this part of NZ.
The wind did pick up again (seems to be an every few days thing down here) which cut our first day on the trail a bit short, but other than that we had loads of sunshine, loads of easy riding and loads of fascinating rail history to enjoy!
We liked it so much that we stayed two nights 60km from the end of the trail at Ranfurly and did another ‘out and back’ to the end of the trail at Middlemarch, again without the bags. This was our longest ride in a while at 120km but with a very gentle downhill in the morning, and therefore a very gentle uphill in the afternoon, no traffic and not a lot of other cyclists – it was the easiest longer ride ever!
What next?
…which was lucky because the reason we had stayed at Ranfurly was that we had a grand plan to make the Central Otago Rail Trail join up directly with the newer but apparently stunning Alps2Ocean trail via just one shortish, but potentially challenging day of riding. The challenging bit? Cycling over the famous Danseys Pass – an epic gravel road crossing the mountains, topping out at nearly 1,000m. Yes – we’ve gone much higher but never on gravel… A nervous night’s sleep beckoned – would we make it?
PS – Not sure if cliffhangers work on this blog so instead to wrap this one up – here’s an assortment of other pics as reminders that whilst this is a cycling trip – it’s not ALL about riding our bikes!
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