Mind the gap 19-23/03/06 We're off down the West Coast on State Highway 6, the road rolls gently for the first few miles, then we crawl up Costello Hill, before finding out what 40mph rain feels like freewheeling down the other side. We struggle over three more vicious hills and reach the sea, the views are amazing, beautiful little bays with waves rolling in; we want to live in every house we see. We reach Punakaiki in the late afternoon, our progress having been slowed by photo stops at every bay. The backpackers is full so we pitch the tent in [View Full Entry]

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Heading West 11-18/03/06 After a day mooching around Picton we're heading for Renwick in the heart of Marlborough wine country; we catch a nasty, thin, cold rain just as we crest the hill out of Picton, but soon afterwards the sun appears and the road flattens out. It's an easy ride into Renwick and we soon arrive at Watson's Way Backpackers. The next day we tour some of the local vineyards, but my tastebuds are misbehaving and I declare every wine I sample "foul" and spit it straight into the spittoon, Vern seems to like most of them! We find a [View Full Entry]

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Sorting the knee 05-09/03/06 The road to Wellington from National Park looks like a great riding route when the local plant life isn't horizontal and the weather isn't blowing "againsterlies" (we'd like to thank Wafflycat for that description). As it is we're sitting on the train admiring the views. On the morning of the 6th we head into Welly to shop for Sealskinz for Vern, they're waterproof socks which he can wear with his cycling sandals (yes, we know Socks And Sandals - the horror!). While we're in Pennyfarthing Cycles we start discussing my knee and are overheard by Shane wh [View Full Entry]

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Heading towards Mount Doom 27/02/06-01/03/06 We 're finally leaving Hamilton, it's going to be weird not being at J's Backpackers anymore and we can both heartily recommend it to anybody heading to Hamilton. Trevor and Bruce show their appreciation of our stay there by ignoring our departure, there's more important stuff to be done, like bagging a place on the sofa to sleep on! We say our goodbyes to Fi and head off towards Te Kuiti. The road is fairly flat, I think Peddler's Paradise describes it as "gently rolling" and the weather is kind to us, cloudy so not too [View Full Entry]

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Frankly this is beginning to get a bit repetitive!! New Plymouth 08-15/02/06 We decide to take the Intercity bus to New Plymouth and then travel down to Wellington for a few days before heading back to Hamilton so that the next medic can give us his opinion about my knee. We are booked into the Sunflower Backpackers which is in the centre of New Plymouth, the place is okay, but by midnight we've had enough of the boy racers revving their engines outside the window and the high pitched shrieks of assorted, inebriated females; it has been a long bus ride [View Full Entry]

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Off the bikes - doctors orders 28-30/01/06 We get dropped off at Anglesea Clinic this morning where a doctor manipulates my knee for a while before announcing that I may have a torn meniscus and I need to rest it for seven days, definitely no cycling. He then tells me that after two days rest I should start exercising it, he says "a really good exercise for the knees is cycling". I give him one of those looks and we come to an agreement where I will lay off for a couple of days, then bimble around gently on the flat [View Full Entry]

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Heading to Raglan 19-22/01/06 So we finally set off south, the weather is abysmal, we decide to stop at Papatoetoe to sit out the worst of the rain in a cafe; after 50mins we have another coffee each because we've made the first ones last so long they're cold! The rain continues to pour down, there are rivers running down the paths as well as the roads, the drains are full and outside the cafe is a water feature Charlie Dimmock would be proud to say she'd made. We continue drinking coffee and decide the ride's going to be a short [View Full Entry]

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Homeward bound 8-10/01/06 We finally decided to get back on our bikes and head off; the object of the journey, meeting our niece, has been accomplished and so it's time to go home, very slowly. Incredibly I was the first person awake and managed to get a cup of tea and toast in complete peace before anybody else got up. We loaded up the bikes and set off towards Russell amid photos, loads of shouts of "Bye", "See you in Britain", "Don't fall off, again" and two rather confused toddlers who hadn't fully realised that Uncle Vernon, the "Muppint (muffin) Man", [View Full Entry]

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Hot springs and hills 4-5/12/05 We rode away from the hostel and headed for the ferry back to the mainland, the hills didn't seem as bad on the way back and the mile downhill to the port was great. We rolled the bikes onto the ferry, expecting the same comedy routine (carrying them fully laden down four steps and over two door sills) as we'd had on the way to Waiheke. Amazingly we were loaded straight onto the back of the boat and only had our fellow passengers to negotiate. The ride out of Auckland took ages, the place goes on [View Full Entry]

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13th November 2005 Didn't exist! Don't you love the International Dateline? Auckland and beyond 14-26/11/05 So, we made it to New Zealand by 6.30 am on the 14th, only one hour late but a number of passengers had to make internal connections and were panicking over the delay, we sat back and let them all flap about, then wandered off the plane and into passport control where everybody got to queue for about 45 minutes anyway. By the time we got through our bags were happily going round and round on the carousel so we grabbed them and made our way [View Full Entry]

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