The End of an Era - the last days on a bike

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Dunedin - Waipiata - Naseby - Lauder - Alexandra - Clyde - Cromwell - Mt Cook - Lake pukaki - Lake Taupo - Fairlie - Geraldine - Christchurch.

Miles

- 297

Luxuries:

Up until now we have had few luxuries, and with the chilly evenings now here to stay our ‘tea’ towels make for a very chilly bath time. Plus I’m tired of finding people drying their pots and pans with my ‘towel’ left to dry on a washing line in the eaves of the campsite shelter! Watching a mother get her three children out of the bath in succession offering each a great big fluffy bath towel underfoot, wrapping another around their bodies and a third for their hair I made sure the girls were looking the other way. Lily and Thea get a coarse rub down, shivering on whatever surface I can find, and clammy pyjamas! However all that is over now as thanks to the Kathmandu (an outdoor shop in NZ) sale we now have 2 large fluffy travel towels…and our motor home will come with a cupboard full more.

Public facilities:

Before we , I had heard that public spaces in New Zealand were pretty good, but my overall impression is that they are absolutely fantastic. There are really imaginative children’s playparks within walking distance of any housing development. All schools have playparks and in remote areas these are open to all when the school is closed. Often these little communities maintain a swimming pool as well, built from community funds. The town swimming pools are fabulous. Aside from the provision of great lane swimming in the main pool, there will then be a specific pool for little children that will have a slide or water features or a moving stream of water - usually the whole lot. And then in addition there will be a Jacuzzi and steam room and even a sauna for adults - all accessible from the pool side at no extra cost. So when we take the girls swimming Ben and I can take it in turns to sneak off for a bit of warmth. The most we have ever paid is £3 per adult and that was in Dunedin where there were huge waterslides the girls wanted to go on. There is a library in even the smallest town, the hours of opening related to the size of the local population, and there is always somewhere offering local information. There are clean public toilets by all the playparks and so far on the South Island I haven’t seen any vandalism of the public facilities. There are Botanical Gardens in every city with an extensive aviary and often animals to visit - this is always free and there is always an excellent play area and a lovely inexpensive café. Like the UK most museums are free.

Diary:

The last thing we did before leaving Dunedin was to employ a babysitter and take an evening off from the girls. We went out with Vanessa and Graham, who we were staying with, and a group of their friends - one of whom it turned out I worked with at the BBC..small world!

From Dunedin we took the Taiteri Gorge railway - now run purely for tourists. True to it’s name you follow a number of gorges and cross some fabulous viaducts while sat in wood panelled carriages or standing on platforms between. The train stops at Middlemarch but cyclists and walkers can carry on further inland on the Otago (sounds like cargo not sago) rail trail.
We set off after lunch on a lovely sunny day with a strong tail wind - even though the cyclists coming in the other direction were on the downhill they couldn’t match our speed going up. We made excellent progress and camped at the side of the trail just before dusk, the scenery on the trail is absolutely fabulous great ridges of mountains and wide open dry yellow golden plains. Once the sun went down it was bitterly cold, and we were glad of our cosy little tent. We had three glorious days on the trail all wonderfully sunny during the day, but very cold at night. There were lots of café’s on route so we took regular coffee breaks. At one café Lily and I were handed a great big baby bottle and sent of in search of the recipient who turned out to be a baby goat. Lily held onto the bottle despite frantic suction by the goat, and Thea was just happy to have a hand on the bottle while Lily did the feeding.
We detoured from the trail to visit Naseby with it’s National Curling team, and interesting old buildings from the goldrush era. We also spent a couple of fruitless hours trying to get back to the trail via Naseby forest, which severely tested both our cycling and navigation skills.
We took the day off when we arrived at Alexandra, to enjoy the fab swimming pool, and climb up to the clock on the hill…a most peculiar sight. Then a short cycle and look around Clyde, where we stayed in a cabin in honour of Lily’s 4th birthday. She seemed unaware of the reduced quantity - and quality - of presents (one watch that didn’t work) and cards - 2 of!
We did another short cycle to Cromwell, though it was very hard pedalling directly into a North Wester, and once there visited an old goldfield. The tour was fascinating and the girls enjoyed panning for gold, Lily left convinced that the rock she had found contained ‘golden’. We had birthday cake, and Lily’s choice of birthday tea - jelly, ice-cream, crisps and cocktail sausages. Then she and Thea joined the other children at the campsite and bounced for about 3 hours solid on a ‘jumping pillow’ - basically a bouncy castle laid flat like a … pillow.
The following morning we were up early to catch the bus to Mount Cook. The lack of water and camping areas over the Lindis pass mean’t we couldn’t cycle it, so the bus was the only option. Great bus ride though, the tourist season is coming to an end so there were only about 5 other passengers. It was another lovely sunny day and the views of this dry rugged landscape from the bus were spectacular. When we got off the bus at Mount Cook we bathed in really warm sunshine and headed straight to put our tent up in the very scenic campsite and take a walk up one of the valleys. Sadly because the valley walls are so steep the sun set about 3:30 so the heat was short lived, but the views were stupendous. The following morning we woke in thick cloud and it didn’t start to clear until we were well along the gravel track towards the Tasman Glacier. However by the time we had climbed the terminal moraine it was blue skies and sunshine again. We were back on the road again just before lunch and pedalled furiously to get to Lake Pukaki before dusk. We stopped for lunch at Glentanner, where we watched a succession of tourist coaches: arrive; passengers transfer to 3 waiting helicopters; 15 minute flight; troop back onto coach. The girls had never seen so much helicopter activity!
The lake Pukaki camp site offered gorgeous views of Mount Cook, and we joined other campers to eat our dinner by their fire on the beach and spend the evening chatting, and drinking (so careless about weight are we these days that Ben has been carrying a bottle of wine since Dunedin!). The girls really enjoyed the fire and even though their eyelids were drooping they really didn’t want to go to bed.
The next morning the mist hung all around and it felt very cold. We all wrapped up for the cycle round the lake and up to the hydro canal which would take us the quiet way to Lake Tekapo. We were disappointed not to see the fabulous views we had had of Mount Cook for the last 2 days, and when the mist finally did start to clear - as we approached Lake Tekapo - we realised we must be in one of the Lord of the Rings sets .. no clue which one but it did look very familiar!
Lake Tekapo is beautiful, but the service station/village is grim and the campsite not much better. More nice scenery and heaps of downhill the following day in fine weather to Fairlie, where the girls discovered two tricycles and a pram on the campsite. We were there by lunchtime and the two of them did not stop cycling until dinnertime - deprivation really does work!
The following morning was overcast again and fairly uninspiring cycling - made harder by Thea’s half hourly demands for more food - bread and butter, apple, banana, crackers. Eventually we realised it must be as a result of all the cycling she did the day before.
We were in Geraldine for lunch, and whilst setting up the tent a young girl came and asked us if we had been on the train to Middlemarch. They had been on the same train but returned to Dunedin to pick up their camper van. Lily and Thea immediately became besotted with Lara and her older sister Hannah, and they played happily all afternoon, and we sat and chatted with their parents - on holiday from Australia. That evening Ben offered to babysit and I went to the quirky local cinema with the Australian family to see ‘Hot Fuzz’..another British movie, I can’t seem to get away from them here!
We decided to get the bus from Geraldine to Christchurch, it was raining and the road would get very busy once we joined the main road from the South, which left us a morning to spare in Geraldine. So we went to see the world’s largest jumper, and a reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry made from a mosaic of knitting machine cog teeth! It was an unforgettable morning in the most bizarre sort of way. We did also find time for a swift visit to the chocolate shop!
We arrived in Christchurch about 3:00 and, as we have decided to do the rest of the trip in a vehicle, we headed straight for the backpackers auction. There were at least 7 vehicles there but none with backseats, and seeing the glum sellers: stuck in a warehouse for a week, paying rent for their spot as they try to sell their vehicles when the tourism market has almost dried up, made me certain we didn’t want to end up like that under any circumstances. The following morning whilst the girls explored Charlie’s house (the friend we are staying with), I rang every single camper van rental company in Christchurch and to cut a long story short we are now about to head off in a 6 berth motor home (because it is the only one that can carry our bikes) for 5 weeks for less than it would cost to hire a car big enough to carry us and all of our stuff. It seems we are destined only to know feast or famine in New Zealand, from having just about nothing, we now have, roughly 8 times the floor space of our tent, 6 beds, a shower, toilet, cooker, fridge, TV and DVD, running water, lighting and heating, fluffy towel, pillows, sheets and duvets - oh and the capacity to do 600kms per day! But in some ways it is quite sad to say bye bye to the bikes, ‘cos now we’ll have to cut down on the chocolate!
In the meantime we’ve been in Christchurch a week and have been to the Antarctic centre, which was great fun with a snow enclosure (complete with arctic storm), and little blue penguins. We’ve also seen our first Kiwi birds, though because they are nocturnal, it was in very dim light and apart from their distinctive beaks I couldn’t see a lot else. Ben’s been mountain biking and fell running with Charlie and his mates, and we borrowed Charlie’s van to visit the Banks peninsula. This is a beautiful spot, a sort of ‘S’ shape around 2 volcanic craters, with great steep sides and a road running along the summit. We managed to see Hectors dolphins here, an albatross, blue penguins swimming in the sea and seals. Tomorrow is our last day here before we get behind the wheel of our beast, and the weather has finally turned really hot and sunny so we are off climbing for the day, and I am going for a girls night out with Charlie’s wonderful flat mate Meredith and a couple of her friends …fab!

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Photos

Otago Raol Trail
Off the Train and on the bike

Otago Raol Trail
Off the Train and on the bike