June means one thing and that's Queen's Birthday Weekend. For the uninitiated, this is a public holiday in New Zealand, with a Monday off work. I got a day's leave for the preceding Friday and started mapping: http://goo.gl/2tFWs
My mate Old John came down on Thursday in his Hiace pop-top camper with one of his moped bikes tucked away inside. I hadn't seen him since since New Years and hadn't ridden with him since the previous Easter, when we did the Gentle Annie (read: steep-as hill) road from Taihape to Napier. That's another story, but suffice to say there was practically zero traffic and that's a really good start.
Anyway, John arrived at my place in Wellington and had his bike ready to go by the time I got home from work. He was travelling light - just four Ortliebs - which turned out to contain a bare minimum of 3 hats; two raincoats; a pair of elastic-sided leather boots AND a pair of sheepskin ugg boots, plus the usual assortment of lunchboxes, thermoses, mp3 players, battery powered speakers and a helmet cam.
By contrast, this was my most laissez-faire tour to date. I took the Trek, which is at present my daily commuter bike, with it's usual Carradice Camper Longflap saddlebag and the usual assortment of Some Tools in the side pockets. I took with me a pair of Dickies 874 pants, Dickies 13" shorts and Dickies double knee Plus Fours which I had my other favourite old guy modify to my random requirements. (Are they any good? Well... Quite good for riding in chilly weather, but I got cold ankles and they're a bit of a pest when you have to go to the bog). Also threw in 4 pairs of socks and my second smallest sleeping bag. I could have done without it, as we stayed in hostelages every night (something about it being ostensibly cold and the middle of winter). Didn't bother taking food, or extra water bottles.
As is my wont, I'd booked a 3am ferry departure. This is partly because all the daytime ferries get booked out well in advance and party because it gets you to Picton at dawn and it's nice to ride into a new day but mostly because you can usually score a place to sleep and I find the three and a half hour trip across Cook Strait intensely tedious...
Thus we arrove in Pickers bright and bleary on Friday morning to a light overcast sky and the usual sights and smells of a greasy port. I's remound of those times with my parents back in '78 - '79, waiting for the hovercraft at Calais with the two Mercedes driven over from Stuttgart. Long story there too.
So, off we went along Queen Charlotte Drive, which always gets me smiling. On the map you can see the main roads going south from Picton to Blenheim, then west along the Wairau and up to Havelock. This is the optimal driving route to get to Nelson. QCD is actually shorter but very twisty, so only twowrists do it and in June there aren't many of those. We stopped at the lookout above the log yard, which is truly massive and rather intimidating. I assume these piles of trees came from anywhere and everywhere north of Lyttelton, which as far as I know is the next most southerly South Island port. That's one stonking amount of biomass. Mixed feelings there. Ah, NZ, the primary producer. Arbitrage our currency, do, awfully.
Anyway, the day progressed nicely and we arrived at our first destination of Portage (or Potrage, as I prefer it). I've stayed there before on one of my three Queen Charlotte Track excursions, but that's Munty Mountainbadger and John, being a bit 71, prefers to stick to the sealed roads. This was the perfect opportunity to check out Kenepuru Sound (being on the other side of the ridge from Queen Charlotte Sound) and the road rather than the track. I thoroughly recommend doing both.
Since it's winter we had the pick of the hostels so we opted to try the backpackerish bit of the Portage Resort Hotel. NZ$40 a night each for a twin bunk room, with shared kitchen and bathroom. There was nobody else there, so that suited us fine. Problem with Potrage (and the Sounds generally) is that shops are very few and far between. In fact the nearest shop to anything was the petrol station back in Linkwater and their pie selection was, sorry to say, quite underwhelming.
Initially I'd intended to go to Blenheim first - essentially to do the route we took in reverse order - but it didn't really matter. For future reference, don't rely on buying food at the Portage store because the selection is poor and it's REALLY expensive, like $5.60 for a can of baked beans or $7.50 for a packet of Toffee Pops. They're certainly garnering quite a reputation for price gouging among the Marlborough people we spoke to, as you would expect. It's not like they're on an island or anything. Jeez, one might even say. Frankly you could just drive into Blenheim, stick a few boxes of groceries on the back seat and be home in a couple of hours. Mark up the retail price 100% and it'd still be cheaper than their current prices. I'd have bought more if their prices were lower. The coffee was diabolical.
Anyway, no biggie. The next day we ventured further up the gorgeous Kenepuru Rd towards Punga Cove. We didn't go down to the cove itself (should have really, though I'd been there before) but instead decided to push on up the hill heading north towards Titirangi. Apparently it's an old farm, formerly accessible exclusively by boat. Very remote. Unfortunately getting there was quite the slog - a dirt road built for diesels, not muscles - and we abandoned once we were (probably) most of the way up. I was pushing and even John was having tro nurse his motor, which is kinda the opposite of what motors are for, I'd say. Anyway, we didn't fancy having to climb that hill again the following day so we cut our losses and retreated back to Smith's Farm Holiday park in Linkwater.
The Nice Lady who booked us in was Nice Indeed - we each recieved a mug of freshly made soup and a muffin, hurrah! Just the thing. We were assigned a cabin with four bunks, very clean and tidy and practically brand new. It was raining pretty hard by then and it was nice to get into a warm bed for the night.
John was sporting his new bought-on-the-Internet rain pants, which seemed to do the trick. I was wearing my usual touring shoes - a pair of Cordovan laceups with a capped toe, which I bought second hand from Ziggurat on Cuba St a few years back and which are onto their third resoling and counting. I wore these through 4 days of very wet Mountainbam up in Rotorua over Easter and not only did they not fall to bits, they also dried out fast (with feet inside a fresh pair of socks) and a bit of a brush and polish. Respectable asbro! Special clothes are dumb.
John was sporting his new bought-on-the-Internet rain pants, which seemed to do the trick. I was wearing my usual touring shoes - a pair of Cordovan laceups with a capped toe, which I bought second hand from Ziggurat on Cuba St a few years back and which are onto their third resoling and counting. I wore these through 4 days of very wet Mountainbam up in Rotorua over Easter and not only did they not fall to bits, they also dried out fast (with feet inside a fresh pair of socks) and a bit of a brush and polish. Respectable asbro! Special clothes are dumb.
Where were we? In a cabin in Linkwater. It was Sunday morning and off we set to Havelock Not North, as I always think of it. You can tell I'm not a Mainlander. At this junkshop I should mention that John isn't either and in fact hadn't been into the South Island since about nineteen seventy-something. He did a mission down south in a VW Kombi van, had a great time, then repaired to Taranaki to build his housetruck and go back again and Do It Properly. "And then my whole life changed!" he explained - working on oil rigs, living in Kuala Lumpur etc etc - and hadn't been back since. Wee bit of a psychological barrier, I felt, and it was nice to be able to show him round some of my favourite bits in the Top o' the South.
So, the hell slap-up breakfast was obtained in Havelock, plus a couple of bits of greenstone and some soap-for-the-wife at the village hall crafts thingo. And a St John's Ambulance-flavoured sausage. Friendly people - the kids say hello to you down these parts. In Wellington they make do with iPodge instead. Just a city/country thing, really.
The rain had eased a bit, so we took a deep breath (so to speak) and headed south on Highway 6. Not really to be recommended - it's just a speed camera shooting gallery for traffic cops. We were immediately caught-and-released by a cop for not wearing helmets, but since we were whatever we were he let us off with a warning. So after being overtaken by cars and trucks doing the usual 100 Km/h (or more, I suppose) it was a Good Thing to finally turn east onto the road to Tuamarina. This is a shortcut to Highway 1 and the optimal way to get to Blenheim if you're us. Nice road, no traff. My favourite.
We sifted around Blenheim looking for Backpaku and eventually tracked one down on the other side of the tracks. We also collected a young Japanese twowrist who'd been apple picking and had hitch hiked in from Motueka. She'd been dropped off at the railway station and was googling up a place to stay on her phone. We'd just ascertained the address of our target residence and took her along with us. She was very appreciative and Japanese about it all, which was charming, of course.
I can't remember the name of the place and I can't be bothered looking it up right now, but suffice to say is was OK and the beds were pretty good. We were sharing with a French guy who was watching the National Geographic Channel and some other guy who got back after John and I had crashed out and was himself crashed out when we left.
So, Monday, the long slow sift back to the Picton ferry,. Blenheim, like many New Zealand small towns, has Secret Interesting Stuff and in this case it's some nice walking/cycling tracks by the river. They go into town and there's even a little amphitheatre. Don't know if it gets used much but I hope it does. So we cruised around and drank coffee and then rode north back to Pickers for the 7pom boat. There are two ferry operators doing the Cook Strait run - the Interislander, which is the maritime bit of the Railways (it changes ownership every few years, I forget what it's currently called) and a newcomer who usually goes broke after a while. This time the alternative is called Bluebridge and they have a couple of ferried which seem to have come from Denmark or some other country with lines through their Os. I'm an obsessive polymath but again, it's half past midnight as I write this and I can't be arsed googling the detaild. You can do it yourself. Anyway, point being, the boat was quite a bit nicer than the Interislander's ferries and they don't bother with the movie, the clown, the extra cafe and bar. The Bluebridge boats have cabin you can rent (we didn't) and no frills but really a better quality experience overall. They're my ferry of choarce.
So, back in Wellington around 10 pm. My lovely wife picked us up, john crashed out in his van and was gone before I left for work on Tuesday. Overall, a very successful trip. My next goal is to do a tour that lasts more than four days. You're barely even warmed up and then you have to stop. Bo-ring!
Lessons learned: Don't worry about preparation. I reckon there are three phases you go through as a cycle tourist. First, you agonise about what to take, get frutsch because you're overloaded and have to keep repacking everything all the time and after you get home you realise didn't even unpack half of what you took. Then there's phase 2, where you get really keen on minimising everything, you buy the little sleeping bag and the short thermarest and the 2 kilo tent. And when you're out on the road you find you forgot your chain breaker, or you left your thermie back at John's place, or you brang the wrong food. And the third phase is you don't even really think about it and you just jump on your usual bike and ride off.
Good pix: John Nagle
Bad pix: me
