New Zealand and maybe more…

It’s 2024 since I’ve cycle toured bar a few short days last May along Hadrian’s Wall with the Magnificent Varley. It’s now time to go again. Winter touring means, in part, the pursuit of better weather abroad and that means quite a long flight. So I plumped for New Zealand. Why ? I once foolishly asked some followers of this drivel where should I go and an old ex-colleague, David Moore, volunteered New Zealand. It stuck in my head that maybe he was right. I had looked at it before but the road system isn’t fulsome and the main roads can be busy and if you seek lesser routes you have to have gravel roads. Gravel roads and trails are the recommended touring routes: ordinarily this is not Tony country. However NZ did seem a gap on the CV. So after a few late nights and a reach out to fellow tourers on Facebook I discovered a way to get from Auckland to Wellington albeit with a little gravel to cover. This trip will be on the North Island and not the South Island. With Anna we’d taken a holiday on the North and South Island in 2023 with a cursory time on the North island before we concentrated on the South Island.

So out came the lists of things to pack, applications for a visa, a bike inspection, route planning in fine detail, accommodation or campsites to research and a ‘pretty please’ to my long suffering wife to deplete her savings and disappear for a few weeks. Funnily enough this latter task was easily accomplished! Coupled to this was getting fit. I cycle all the time and so my buttocks have been broken in many decades ago but I think this ride has some daunting days and in preparation I have gone out in cold and miserable weather to climb up brutal hills in the Peak District and the Yorkshire Wolds to give myself a fighting chance. Amongst the inclement challenges was local Yorkshire flooding where avoidance, with failing daylight, retracing my route wasn’t wise and the option was to get off and walk along roads with icy water up my calves. My carbon road bike, even with mudguards weighs around 10.5kg. When I start touring my touring bike and all the luggage will be c30kg. The touring bike has a lot more lower gears but, as you can imagine, the first few days, with all that weight takes some getting used to.

As if by Divine Intervention Anna discovered a cousin of mine who resides In Auckland and the gravestone of an aunt (her mother). I cannot remember having met the aunt. She made a rare trip back to Blighty when I was probably about 5 years old. However, I recollect meeting the cousin on that visit (a very long time ago!) and, for one reason or another, thought she was long dead now. I’ll meet her shortly after landing and then I’ll wend my way slowly down the west coast.

In Wellington will be Paul, I hope (!), an old friend from my Manchester Polytechnic days who splits his days between the UK and NZ. I would have posted a photograph of him but the most recent one has of him strangely sat astride a camel. We see each other during the year nowadays, usually at cricket matches, and after the gravel roads and hills I will be ready for a proper bed and that beer.

I have some concerns that this may be quite a daunting ride but as Mao Tse Tung once opined ‘the longest journey starts with the first step’ or pedal stroke in my case. Oh yes and there is ‘maybe more’ but you’ll have to wait.