Wednesday January 15, 2014

We woke up this morning and the temperature was 5 degrees, another cold morning, but the sun was out and it looked as though it was going to be a nice day.  However, at 7:00 it was cold, I had my leggings on, had found my ear warmers and my gloves.  It is supposed to be summer.  During the ride we were peeling of layers so that by 10:30 we were back to our normal cycling gear of shorts and top and sandals.

Today we were planning on getting to Omarama (85ks).  There was a short-cut we could take that would take of a couple of 2.5 ks and a few hills.  In the book Peddlars Paradise it indicated that road works had been undertaken, even though the barriers may still be in place.  Use at your own risk.  Well we decided to use at our own risk.  We cycled the 8kms down to the gate and discovered that the road works were newly started and this was major road works, we could not use this road. We had to turn back.  A 2.5 km shorter route turned out to be a 16 kms add on.  Oh well, it would have been a lovely route.

Todays route was mainly undulating, no major hills and with magnificent views of Mount Cook and then along Lake Pukaki a lovely day.

We arrived in Twizel at about 2:00 pm, I suggested stopping for something to eat and then carrying on to Omarama, but Ralf said we should stop.  That was a good idea, as it was getting really hot 30 degrees.  Amazing how we can go from 5 degrees to 30 degrees in one day.

We like to stop at about 2:00, it is a good time to stop, we get time to put up the tent, shower, shop or visit the area, do any washing that needs doing and relax.  Sometimes I even get time to update the blog before supper, if I get free wi-fi.

Tuesday January 14, 2014

This morning started very cold, Ralf wore his long pants and I had my leggings on brr.  It was only about 7 degrees!

The route was a steady uphill climb with a slight head wind.   The road was good with wide enough shoulders and most of the cars gave us enough room.

We stopped in Burkes Pass Village which had a lovely little church which we were able to go inside.  It also had a little antique store, and fabulous wooden garden furniture for sale.  Would look great in cottage country.

Then we started the real climbing of the Burkes Pass 709 metres.

The climb up Burkes Pass was hard with the wind but we managed it.  From there it was primarily downhill, with a few undulations.  As we rounded Dog Kennel corner the vista opened up and it was an “Oh My God” this is incredible, then –

“oh My god this is more incredible”.

It was awesome.

Ralf’s comment: Another windy day in paradise with hills great! –

oh my god this is incredible.

We stayed overnight in a campsite on the Lake that we thought would cost $50.00, it only costs $30.00 for this view.

Lovely campsite.

Monday January 13, 2014

Another day, another wind this time not in our favour and this time with added hills.  A tough day of cycling.  Yesterday we cycled 50 ks in 2hrs 18 mins, today was 45 ks in 2hrs 58 mins.  You win some you lose some.  The scenery was still stunning and the hills were manageable.

We had planned to try and get to Lake Tekapo (90 kms) but had the contingency plans of Fairlie and Kimbell.  Fairlie has a campsite, Kimbell doesn’t.  Fairlie it is.  Again very clean facilities and great people in the kitchen.  Tomorrow we will get to Lake Tekapo, hoping the winds are in our favour again.

At one point we watched the wind blowing through a barley or oat field, the patterns it was making up the hill was stunning.  You can’t get the full effect from the photo, but it still looks pretty good.

MacKenzie District – was named after a Scottish sheep rustler who found a way over the mountain pass with stolen sheep and then set up his own station. He was caught and put in jail.

Today we met a very impressive couple.  We had seen them cycling through Town on a tandem with a large trailer on the back.  We thought it was a bit over the top for two young people to be carrying so much.  Until we got into the camp site and saw two extra little helmets on the trailer.

This young couple were travelling with their 17 month old twin girls.  That is impressive.  They were a really nice couple, English and Australian travelling for a month in the South Island.  They had heard the North Island roads were bad so decided to do the South Island.  We had a long chat with them and they told us how they travelled with the girls – allowing time for them to play in the morning and then by the time they start cycling at 10:00 ish the girls are ready for their first nap.  They stop when they wake up and let them play again and then cycle again a couple of hours later.

There was also a very inquisitive blackbird.

Sunday January 12, 2014

We woke up this morning with the wind battering our tent.  Wonderful, another windy day in paradise.  While I was in the shower block one of the other campers said her awning had blown away in the night.  We managed to get the tent down and had our breakfast then headed out into a very windy day.  We passed this hedge as we left the Village of Mt Somers, no idea what it was supposed to represent.

The wind was in our favour yippee.  There were some scary moments when we crossed an intersection and the wind was blowing from the side and blew me down the side-road, but for the most part we had a 60 km tail-wind.  Ralf stopped pedaling for 1 km and still managed to do 25.5 kph.

Next math question, how fast does the wind have to be blowing to move something that weighs 137 kgs (Ralf on the bike with loaded panniers) down the flat road at 25.5 kph?

We saw 7 separate groups of road cyclists that were coming from the opposite direction – they were struggling against the wind.  We however, finished 51.26 kms in 2 hrs 18mins, awesome.  Today was also the first time since Auckland that I have been in my big gears:)

We stayed the night in Geraldine, a lovely little town.  Of course there are some people in Geraldine who have way too much time on their hands.  Like the woman who has knitted the largest sweater in the world (Guinness World Book of Records).  Her husband and daughter spent years recreating the 1066 Bayeaux Tapestry (sp?) out of 4,500,000 pieces of steel and then hand-painting them to match the original tapestry in France!!  The woman at the iSite was very impressed with it and was telling everyone about it!!..

Ralf and I did not feel the need to go and visit this, even though it was in the down town area.

We met up with one of the groups of cyclists at a coffee shop, one of the ladies had been blown of her bike, so they cut their ride short.  They were training for a 3 day, 320 km charity ride in February – 3 days fully supported, with food and accommodation included for $200.00 and however much you raise for the local charities.

Saturday January 11, 2014

A lovely ride today with one big climb and a small climb.

The two climbs came after Rakaia Gorge at about 25 kms into the ride.  The big climb came directly after the gorge and basically went straight up from the gorge a 14% grade, then leveled off and then went up again at a 10% grade.

It was pretty much downhill from there and will continue downhill until Geraldine tomorrow.

We stopped at the gorge for about half an hour, it was stunning.  We took loads of photos but I have only chosen a couple to go on the blog.

We carried on cycling through a mix of sheep, cattle and deer farming areas with the mountains to the right of us.  The scenery in this country is amazing.  Somewhere in the middle of nowhere (Alford) we spotted these sculptures of Moa.

This old farmer came and chatted to us, what a lovely man.  His farm has been in his family for about 5 generations and has recently changed from cattle/sheep to deer.  He had 2 dead possums on his car – he traps them and then sells the pelts.  He gets about $150 for a kilo of possum fur.  Chris has a Possum and merino wool sweater which is so light and warm I was looking at treating myself to something with possum and merino mix, but you have to hand-wash it very carefully and dry flat – not going to happen on this trip.

From Ralf: My deer wife, the vegetarian, is thinking about having some venison for dinner tomorrow night!! – There is hope for me yet.

We stopped at Stavely for a late lunch a little Village.  The church was built by the Methodists in 1903, they sold it to the Presbyterians in 1905 and now it is shared by the Anglicans and the Presbyterians.

Today’s camp site is a domain site.  This generally is a limited service camp, usually toilets and maybe a shower.  However, this has a kitchen, showers and a great price $15.00.

My first migraine in over 2 months.  As we left the camp-site I felt it come on, I quickly took some pills and kept it in abeyance.  The first 15 kms were a bit slow because of it, but we picked up the pace after the gorge.

Friday January 10, 2014

Another late night chatting to Biffy.  She is a really interesting person and has travelled extensively.  She advised us to take a different route than the one we had planned.  Going inland to the lake districts of Tekapo and then down to Queenstown.  I wanted to go to Dunedin and see the penguins in Omaru.  We don’t actually have to decide on the route until tomorrow night when we have to go further inland or back out to the coast.  Other people we have spoken to say we should go inland.  I think we will be going inland.

Today’s ride was a very flat ride out of Christchurch, the wind was behind us most of the way.  Rather an uneventful ride, very quiet back country road (The Old West Coast Road).

At one point all we could see down the road was very tall cedar hedgerows.

We occasionally got a glimpse of the mountains – which are snow-topped.

For all of those Canadians who are emailing us about the amount of snow you have, there is snow here too 🙂

A very noisy and social camp-site tonight.  We spoke to Dana who was making a wonderful pumpkin and kumara, spinach, feta, sun-dried tomato and spinach salad.  How do we know it had all those wonderful ingredients because as we sat down to eat our pasta supper she bought us a bowl of it, yum lovely.

This site had a lot of Kiwis on holiday with lots of kids running around.  When we arrived Ralf said what a great site for kids, they have to use their imagination and play, as there was no games room, no TV and no pay as you go internet.  Of course at 9:00 when we were ready for bed the kids were still “using their imagination” and building forts and dens not far from our tent.  Everything quieted down around 10:15.  Ralf commented he might be featured on the news tomorrow “Missing Kiwi Children at Campsite”.

Thursday January 9, 2014

We had an excellent evening with our warm-showers host last night.  Biffy arrived home at about 6:00 p.m. and proceeded to make us a wonderful salmon “quiche”  it had potatoes as the base and was lovely.

We chatted with Biffy until 11:00, we knew we were going to have lie-in which we did until 8:00 a.m.  We had a relaxing breakfast and decided to catch the bus into Christchurch.  It was a very interesting and somewhat sombre day.

The devastation that the February 2011 earthquake caused is awful.  There has been some rebuilding, but the area that we walked around there was still a lot of buildings that need to be torn down. Part of the problem with the recovery project is the discovery of asbestos in some of the buildings, built pre-1970.

It was so very sad seeing the Cathedral in such a state.  We also went to the Botanical gardens, which was absolutely beautiful.

 The range of emotions that Ralf and I felt as we went from the peace and serenity of the Botanical Gardens to see the old architectural buildings that are literally falling down or have been taken down.

We also went in to the Re-Start Mall.  This is an area of Christchurch where the buildings have been torn down and replaced with sea containers as boutique shops.  They have great ideas and designs in place to rebuild the area, but it will take a long time.

As Ralf said the heart of the City may have been torn out, but the spirit lives on.

The Botanical gardens, it was a little chilly in Christchurch.

Wednesday January 8, 2014

I was able to skype Joy, my sister today from the library in Amberley, she has been diagnosed with cancer.  What crappy news. She will have more news for me when she sees the oncologist etc on January 21, 2014. We may change our plans, and do the UK and Europe next.  We will decide when we get more news from Joy.

We started our ride later than usual at 10:00. The wind changes again!!  Today started warm and sunny.  The later start wasn’t a problem as our warm-showers host would not be available until 6:00pm and we only had 45 ks to cycle, an easy day or so we thought.  We had a gale force head wind all the way into Christchurch.  It was an horrendous ride.  We had to come away from State Highway 1 at Woodend as it turned into a motorway.  I wonder what the difference is from 2-lane road driving at 100 kph to motorway driving at 100 kph.  We rejoined Main Road North which seemed suicidal to me at the time.  Four-lane road (dual-carriageway) with speeds in excess of 100 kph (England think the A52, Canada think Highway 11).  It did have a wider shoulder but the cars didn’t give us an inch.  We were on that section for about 4 ks.

We stopped at Woodend for a sandwich and a cup of tea.  We had a great, cheap lunch even cheaper as my tea was free.  There wasn’t a button on the cash register for tea so I got it for free.  Paula, the lady that served us invited us on her boat in Picton (we can go fishing) if she is up there at the same time as we are when we go back to Wellington.

We came across a New Town just outside of Christchurch.

Tuesday January 7, 2014

Another great day of cycling.  The morning started off cold and slight rain showers.  We got the tent down before it started to rain and we had a few rain showers for the first 20kms.  We also had a few small ‘bumps’ to get up and over after Amberley, then we had the tail-wind from heaven.  We came over the last little hill and cruised down the other side it was awesome, I didn’t pedal for about 2 kilometres.  I was laughing so hard it was tremendous.  I had to touch my brakes as we went over a railway track, then I pedaled a couple of times and again just cruising at 29+ kph how good does that feel?  Amazing.  My new Garmin tells me when I have completed a personal best – Fastest 40 kms today.  Not that this is a race, but it did feel good to be doing my usual 29+kph on my touring bike.  We got in to Amberley just after 12:30 had something to eat and decided that we would stay here overnight. It is a lovely little Town and we had time to have a nice wander around.

We could have easily got into Christchurch as we were both feeling good, but we have a warm-showers arranged for tomorrow night and the next night.  An extra rest day this week, because we wanted to spend an extra day in Christchurch.  I hope to get the blog updated.

We met a lovely older gentleman in the camp kitchen today.  He lives here permanently and has a little vege garden.  He cut some swiss chard for us so we will have a stir fry tomorrow.  We also met a lovely Austrian girl (Verenna) who is travelling around New Zealand doing some climbing and touring.  She has just qualified as a teacher and will look for a job when she gets home at the end of February. She invited us to stay with her when we go through Austria, she lives south of Vienna.

We see lots of old cars along the road.  Ralf spotted this one in Amberley.

Monday January 6, 2014

How do I explain to non-cyclists what a perfect day today was for cycling.  We had three hills to climb and at the top of them we still had energy and our legs felt good and strong. The down hills were not terrifying.  The sun was out, but it wasn’t too hot.  The wind was more of a side wind than a head-on which kept us from over-heating.

The road after the hills was undulating enough to keep it interesting and the scenery was incredible. Every corner we came around the scenery changed and seemed to be more stunning.

The only thing that would have made it absolutely perfect was there to be no cars or transports on the road, but I can’t have everything.

The hedges are for protection.

We found a lovely little campsite in Cheviot, that has everything we need; hot showers, laundry, fully equipped kitchen and even a set of boules that we played while waiting for the laundry to finish. It has peacocks, peahens that has babies, ducks, chooks, horses and of course sheep in the next field.  The price was good as well.  We walked to the pub for a well deserved beer and decided to eat as the prices were good and they had a vege burger on the menu.  It was good and so was the beer.  Perfect day.