Packed up and ready to roll, we enjoyed a wholesome breakfast (large bowl porridge, granola, fresh fruits including strawberries, raspberries and blueberries) and the ubiquitous ‘Sharron cannot ride without’ coffee.

Great view from our table. We watched the melodious honey eaters searching for nectar in the flax flowers.

The front of our accomodation after forking out $1,025 NZ for two nights, two dinners, two breakfasts….gulp. I don’t feel quite so guilty for breaking the glass in the unit that shattered into so many pieces as we were leaving.

The accomodation itself is a common motel presentation but it is the location at this time of year that has driven the nightly price up. The meals were excellent too, with the porridge with add ons (fresh fruit and granola) being $32 each.

On paper today our ride into Blenheim would be an easier ride, despite its 103 km length.

There was a gently 5 km uphill section before a very gradual downhill run, which would have a few undulations.

The first half was wind free. We thought we were on easy street and then bang, just like that, there it was, as ubiquitous as my morning coffee. I like my coffee strong, and so it seems, wind too 🤣🙈. Happy New Year Sharron and Tony, love from the Weather Gods 🤣

View from the top of our climb.

We were in the Wairau Valley, following the river of the same name, ridges and mountains including Mount Richmond either side.

We crossed over the Wairau River, which is very wide and silted in places but you can see that gravel is removed regularly, similarly to what we see with European alpine river systems.

New Zealand does not have venomous creatures like Australia. You can go for a bush pee without fear!

However, they more than make up for it with geology. This valley forms part of the Alpine fault and is moving at 30 metres per 1,000 years. That is considered to be significant.

South Island is also overdue for a major earthquake. There is a 75% chance of major earthquake happening in the next 50 years. There is an 80% chance it will be a magnitude 8+ event.

The Alpine Fault has a regular history of producing large earthquakes. Over the last 8,000 years the Alpine Fault has ruptured 27 times.on average, every 300 years. The last significant quake being in 1717.

The valley is also famous for wine growing. 30 km or so, both sides of the road, were dedicated to grapes. the word Wairau in Maori means ‘river garden’ and today could see why. Fertile soils, multitude of labels and vineyards to visit.

The road was incredibly long and straight. The last 50 km was headwind.

Look at the wind map. Seems common. The wind comes up the east side of South Island, swings west, then south across Nelson and bang into our faces riding.

More views!

There were no places we could stop to grab a drink or food today for 90 km. It is a public holiday today here, but even on a business day, it would be necessary to be self sufficient for the ride.

We stopped here at a small cemetery as there were toilets.

Our route took us through Renwick with only 13 km remaining. It had started to sprinkle rain. We found a supermarket open and grabbed a banana and roll and put the two together!

Rain jackets on it got heavier as we approached Blenheim, some two hours before we could check in to an Airbnb home.

We took shelter in a covered bus stop. By chance, our Airbnb just wrote to us confirming 4 pm. I let her know we were in town sheltering and she said we could check in at 3 pm. We were super grateful ❣️

So here we are. Last full day of riding completed. here is our riding route to date. The blue lines are from our comp,eyed riding data. We will join that line from Blenheim to Picton tomorrow.

Thanks for reading….two half days if riding remain.

😊❣️🚴

Today we were set to explore a section of the Nelson Lakes National Park, home to the beginning of the Southern Alps.

Our base is the town of St Arnaud that we arrived in last night.

Looking around at the other guests at our accomodation, many are here to do walks, mountain biking and boating.

Unlike Tasmanian National Parks, we have been able to access the parks here free of charge.

Two alpine lakes, Rotoroa and Rotoiti form the heart of this 102,000 hectares park.

Both lakes are surrounded by steep mountains, and surrounded at shore level by honeydew beech forests.

We had a great breakfast and set off.

Here is today’s route. essentially only three roads were ridden on.

St Arnaud-Kawatiri Highway, turning into the Kawatiri-Murchison Highway, then turning left onto Gowan Valley Road. Hard to get lost today.

The roads were all good quality but the middle 6 km (each way) section on the Kawatiri-Murchison Highway was busy, narrow, little to no verge. The other two roads were quiet and far more enjoyable.

The gradient replicated the three roads. The down is the first two roads, then the up to the lake and opposite to return. Whilst it looks steep it wasn’t. The average gradient climbing was mostly 2-3%.

We had a headwind on the first downhill hoping it would not change direction for our return journey. Of course, it did and we did the climb home into a growing intensity headwind.

Weather wise, it started overcast with a small probability of rain.

We left well rugged up. I pulled out my long sleeve thermal base to wear, then my cycling jersey, then my wind gilet, then my Assos wind jacket, then my Assos visibility vest. Legs were bare but they do all the work. I had leggings on the bike I could put on if need be.

Layering is what gets you through inclement weather…taking layers on and off, having somewhere to store them too as you ride.

By the time we returned I was down to my more usual kit with the thermal and jacket both off and stored away.

Reaching the junction of our second road, the Kawatiri-Murchison Highway there is a pleasant roadside stop, toilets, historical information.

The Great Taste rail trail that has featured heavily earlier in our trip used to connect with the former station here.

Turning towards Lake Rotoroa we see the mountains again forming the St Arnaud Ranges.

Finally after 43 km we arrived at the lake. Superbly majestic.

A family were preparing to launch their boat.

We had planned to spend time sitting by the lake. Little black biting insects had other plans and we stood there slapping our legs silly.

New takeaway? Find a small insect repellant to add to the first aid kit I carry. Preferably flat sachets!

As we ate some food, slapped our legs like a crazy Finland Fish Song Dancer we read about Peter Johanson, a Swedish immigrant and early pioneer of the area.

This is the remnant of one of his hand cut canoes.

Heading out from the lake we crossed this bridge where the Gowan River flows into the lake.

The road out was still quiet. Mostly the traffic was heading towards the lake.

The Gowan River flows adjacent to the road.

I have read before that it was a Tasmanian who introduced possums to New Zealand. Whilst regarded as a pest, there are others who make products from their fur.

Living in Possum Lane, Turners Beach, we have two types of possum (brush tail and ringtail) that visit (as seen on our security cameras at night and evidenced by Khaleesi carrying on when they walk along the fence).

The only time they have annoyed us, or should I say me, is when one destroyed my zucchini’s last year. I was unimpressed.

Quirky and someone with a sense of humour set this up in a paddock.

Heading back along that final road was the steady climb and the most annoying wind direction had swung around to be a headwind with increased gusty intensity.

It is a cyclists curse when that happens as you hope you will benefit one way at least. Not today….again!!

We made slow you going of the last 20 km. At times the wind was so strong I could not even do 12 kmh.

Here is our speed graph for the ride. you can see how the speed dropped from just before 60 km. That is the wind factor.

We had great views looking back towards St Arnaud’s. This is a great road for cycling, despite the wind. cars were considerate and the road was quite wide.

After 85 km and 734 m climbing we were back at our accomodation

After dinner we went on a 3 km walk down the road to Lake Rotoiti.

A local resident had this natural weather indicator in their front yard. Click the photo to enlarge the writing.

No dogs, not even in your car!

Lovely views along the lake. It was quite windy and cool down by the lake, nevertheless there were a group of kids swimming as their well rugged up parents watched.

Views around the lake.

It’s been great visiting the alpine lakes and seeing the northern mountains of the Southern Alps. Quite the contrast after our predominantly sea view trip.

Tomorrow is a new year, 2025.

We’ve had a great 2024 with our cycling adventures, visiting Italy, Switzerland, Slovenia, San Marino, New Zealand completing over 4,000 km outside of Australia.

My strava data tells me I did over 21,000 km in total for the year.

Whilst that sounds pretty ok, a lot of that is on Zwift, an easier way of amassing training km than outdoors as there are no weather elements and cars to contend with and the cycling speeds are higher, draft benefits are strong. It keeps me fit though for what we do touring wise.

I want to pay homage to our friend Kat Secteur in the Czech Republic.

Kat has done over 55,000 km for the year and it is all outside. 100%. She does not have a trainer. What’s more, the weather whilst she rides now is winter, so lots of snow and her ride a few days ago was minus 1c.

Well done Kat. I had the pleasure of doing a day ride with Kat back in 2018 of about 235 km. We rode out towards the border of Czech Republic, Poland and Germany. That is my biggest outside ride and it was with a wonderful group.

Well done Kat, inspiring women globally.

Happy New Year readers. Thankyou for your continued support and may 2025 be happy and healthy. 😊❣️

Today was an interesting day on the bike. Challenges to meet as we rode 112 km, climbed 1081 metres, heading from the Golden Bay coast to the mountains around St Arnaud.

We started off with a light breakfast at our accomodation, keen to start cycling as the weather forecast clearly showed rain was due in St Arnaud early to mid afternoon.

We were to climb most of the day as can be seen from our graph. Within that climbing, there were nine registered climbs on our Hammerhead computer. The hardest climb was that little one you can see around the 50 km mark. Seriously tested us. We had a headwind nearly all day.

Leaving Motueka we headed out along the Motueka Valley Highway, following the Motueka river. The day was crisp with only a few clouds, sun was beaming.

The plan was to follow as much of the Great Taste Trail as possible, in dry weather. The trail is predominantly gravel, of varying widths and quality. We had completed the section from Nelson to Kohatu the previous week.

We liked this sign. The bridge ahead was in better condition than the sign indicated with beautiful views as we crossed.

The trail incorporates numerous suspension bridges. This one is quite narrow and had a lot of swing! Neither of us had gotten off our bike, but straddled over as we walked across. That is not recommended. Get off and push it!

Our method resulted in greater swing! I ended up waiting for Tony to get to the other side as it was always swinging contrary to my leg movements.

The trail does follow roads at times, and this section was quiet as it went through dense vegetation providing a nice canopy from the now warm sun.

This was the start of a 31 km gravel section. At this point we could have turned left to follow the Highway and saved 14 km overall. However, we had decided to follow the trail despite the weather we knew was coming.

3 km along that road we turned back to this same spot. The road was not in good condition. It was heavily corrugated, loose, dusty and it was shaking the teeth out of our mouth, rattling our brains and reminding me I should have peed earlier!

We felt we had nothing to gain of possibly 31 km of these conditions at the very slow speeds we were doing.

This road is best tackled with an mtb bike with suspension.

Back to the highway and off we went heading to the next town of Tapawera where we needed to find food. The taste trail also looped back to this town so we would be back on our original planned route at that point.

More nice river vistas and interesting sights.

In Tapawera we were surprised to hear a cyclist call out to us. It was Anne, whom we had meet one week before at Spooner’s tunnel and then had lunch with at Kohatu.

Anne had been cycling in the area whilst Greg had a massage for a pesky back. Greg turned up and we all sat down and chatted as Tony and I had some food, Anne sharing some lovely blueberries she had purchased close by.

It amazes me these random catch ups…if you had tried to plan this, we could not have achieved a better timing result. I had only been thinking about them as we arrived in town as the cafe we met at was only a further 8 km away.

As they drove past us, Anne snapped a few more photos and sent them to us. Rare for us to have a photo of both of us riding together.

We headed back onto the Taste trail and rode up through the Maniaroa cutting. This part of the trail is an old rail trail.

We stopped to look at these three sculptures, promoting a private adjacent sculpture park. Looks like lollipops on sticks.

The next section was on state highway and not very pleasant. The traffic was super heavy and that headwind that had been omnipresent all day was strengthening.

After 15 km or so, we were pleased to deviate onto a quieter road, little traffic, just the headwind.

It was warm, and given we were climbing all day and into a headwind, we were consuming more fluid than usual. We were running low again, and Tony headed off to this stream hoping the water would be ok to drink.

Whilst he was under the bridge, the farmer drove out, and I did ask him if the water was drinkable, and he told us we’d be fine.

With 20 km to go, we had six registered climbs to complete, with two around three km in length. They were all on a busier connector road.

The further we went, we could see that down to our right, the weather was closing in,and we knew we were highly unlikely to not get wet.

With only 9.5 km remaining we stopped to don our wet weather gear and bang the skies opened. The camera stayed firmly tucked away in the dry for the rest of our ride.

We had hail and decent sized hail stones smacking onto our face with the headwind. We took cover under a forest of trees as the thunder boomed.

Each boom of thunder seemed to shake more hail from the skies, like it loosened it up. I have never been out in a hail storm before and found that interesting although wishing it would stop!

It eased up just a tad and we really needed to get moving. The temperature had dropped significantly and our legs were starting to get cold. The best way to warm our body was to pedal.

The weather gods had more tricks up their sleeves. They introduced lightning! Thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening indeed! 🎶

I was counting between the lightning bolts and thunder. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three….boom!

We kept pedalling. I was thinking of the final two km climb in May climbing Passo Gardena in Italy, where we had a dry thunderstorm (the gods waited until we got to the top before sending down the rain, plus there was no lightning).

20-30 metres separated Tony and I and flash, a lightning bolt in between us! I only got to one missi…and boom the loudest clap of thunder I have ever heard above my head.

I screeched out telling it to ‘go away’ (perhaps said less politely) and we headed to some trees but they provided no shelter in this case so we got back on the road, as we still had one km left in this final climb.

By the time we made the intersection to St Arnaud’s it was just absolutely bucketing down rain. The hail stopped.

Fortunately it was downhill to St Arnaud, little traffic (they were more sensible) and we just concentrated on getting there as safely and quickly as possible.

We are staying in the Alpine Lodge and have our Chinese laundry set up nicely. A warm shower and lovely dinner to end a memorable day on the bike.

Days like this are memorable for the variety and the tenacity required to get through the difficult parts. It was not an easy day with the constant climbing and headwind let alone the hail, thunder, lightning and rain.

There is something very satisfying in achieving this under your own steam successfully and we were on a high.

This is the radar as we arrived in St Arnaud’s. St Arnaud’s is around that bright red blob, South Island.

Thanks for reading and following our adventures vicariously. For those who send us messages via the various means, a huge thanks as your support and encouragement is appreciated. 😊❣️🚴

Another beautiful day and a highlight on this trip visiting the Abel Tasman National Park.

First things first, breakfast back at the Courthouse Cafe, our go to cafe in this area. Ok the pickings are slim, but this cafe is excellent and would shine anywhere.

Goodbye Collingwood as we climbed up and over a few hills heading back towards Motueka.

The views towards the Aorere Valley were clear. This is the valley we cycled to get to Langfords store.

Riding back through Takaka and Motupipi we headed to Pohara and the coastline.

Ligar Bay was next as we followed the coast road.

This shack is on a slither of land that juts out from the beach on one side and a tidal inlet on the other. Perfectly positioned.

Above Tata Beach we climbed sharply. Quite a hard little climb too and it was getting quite warm.

At the top the views were those within the national park.

Looks like a mussel farm? Mussels are certainly popular locally.

Then the fun began. looking at our climbing graph, that nasty climb to 300 metres was all on gravel, loose and slippery in parts due to no recent rain dampening it down.

I knew this would be a challenge for me in addition to the gravel dust from other users.

I did it. Up and down! In fact, I prefer up to the slippery down. We dud get passed by two blokes on mtb e-bikes and a plethora of cars, some towing boats.

What a place. Totaranui Beach is my new favourite place in New Zealand. It’s magnificent.

You can camp here but there were no caravans as the road is not suitable.

We arrived 2 hours before our ferry shuttle was due so we did enjoy chilling on the beach.

Popular with boats, campers and bushwalkers, the area is serviced by a few water taxi and ferry shuttles. They drop bush walkers off and collect. We saw many walkers leave with their backpacks.

We booked with Wilson’s and can highly recommend them to cyclists. We needed to remove our rear panniers, pedals front bags. The bikes were strapped to the railings at the front of the boat.

We are a bit ‘precious’ about our bikes but have nothing but compliments for the crew.

The ferry shuttle made about five stops along the coastline picking up a variety of people. We sat with a Dutch couple who had spent 4 hours walking a particular trail and were heading back to their hire car in Kaiteriteri.

There was commentary provided by the crew about the local history including granite mining, forestry, maritime reserve efforts and fur seal colonies.

Lots of wonderful looking beaches and rugged coastline. The only way in is by boat or walking.

The route our ferry took.

Once in Kaiteriteri the ferry beached itself and off we all piled.

We put our luggage and pedals back on and high tailed it to Motueka climbing and winding out way out and eventually dropping back into the Great Taste Trail.

We are in Motueka overnight and enjoyed a nice meal at the Sprig and Fern, having given up on the Motueka Hotel when after one hour they’d not started cooking our dinner, and we were one of the early orders.

Totaranui is a definite highlight, plus the effort taken to actually get there!

Getting ready for another day, thanks for reading 😊❣️🚴

Cape Farewell the most northerly point on the South Island mapped by Abel Tasman and named by Captain Cook. It’s Maori history is a lot older and if more significance.

Today the area houses an eco sanctuary enclosed by a predator proof fence.

Today we were heading back up towards the Cape and the Spit to explore more.

Unlike yesterday it was very overcast with low cloud.

Humans can be scary as we had found out the previous day.

It was back onto gravel roads at Port Puponga, heading in a generally westerly direction. The signpost indicated it was 6 km to a camp ground that also had a coffee shop.

It was also the base for many walks in the area.

There was a consistent flow of tourist traffic heading in, but they drove at a far more considerate pace, and many were 2wd vehicles and a variety of camper vans.

There is some farmland.

Once we arrived at the end of the road, Tony took the camera and walked in to Whaririki Beach as we deemed it unsuitable for me with my knee and lack of appropriate footwear.

Photos from Whaririki Beach and walk back out.

The cafe is a quirky place, well sited for walkers.

We then rode back out the 6 km gravel road, with increasingly heavy inward bound traffic including three 4wd buses.

We then took another gravel road to Farewell Spit, which consists of 25 of stable land and 5 km of mobile sand spit. It is the longest sand spit in New Zealand.

You can walk to the outer spit, facing the Tasman Sea.

A borrowed aerial photo showing the spit extent.

Our view from the inner spit, forming part of Golden Bay. Very shallow waters, lots of drift wood. This is on the stable land part.

A more alarming sign!

A very pleasant 25 km ride back to Collingwood where we were able to get into a nice groove of around 25-26 km per hour to arrive at our favourite cafe, Collingwood Court House.

I was keen to try the mussel chowder and it was the best chowder I have ever had !

The other cafe? This art work sign appeared on the window the previous day. Doors were shut so I had peered at the art work through the windows. However, as we headed back to shower guess who was standing out the front? NgAngA himself. Fish can’t be biting!

Collingwood is worth visiting! We really like the little village and area. Great waterways, mountains, vistas, cafe, quirkiness and bike rides.

Tomorrow we move onwards on our little cycle tour.

Thanks for reading.