Friday, 10 March 2017

Rimutaka Adventures...

Cycling out of Wellington is easy peasy. There's a trail that runs alongside the Highway the entire way out, right to Petone. It's an hours cycle to Petone - then the Rimutaka Cycle Trail starts. This trail winds through the Rimutaka Ranges and was to take me out to the Wairarapa Valley. 

It was actually pretty tough on my touring bike. The trail itself was quite gravely and it was slow going. There were also some short steep parts that my tyres just couldn't grip onto, so I ended up getting off and pushing in parts and pushing a loaded touring bike is hard work!

It took me about 2 hours to travel 10km on this road and by 7:20pm I was a bit worried about the darkness. I ended up coming out on Stage Highway 2 a third of the way through the Rimutaka Ranges (I needed to get on the tarseal and didn't want to get stuck in the ranges for a night!), climbed for 13km uphill and reached the top in near darkness. Put all the lights on my bike, doned the hi-viz and headed off downhill for 8km...luckily at that time of night there wasn't too much traffic! Whizzed downhill and ended up door knocking at a house I found at the bottom of the hill. It was just too dark to go further. Lesson learned - don't keep cycling when you're not really sure of the trail! 

All ended well though (a guy named Paul took me in and gave me his couch for the night), I left the next morning at 7:30 and cycled an easy 20km on to Martinborough to the school to meet my friend Marta, where she was dropping off her kids Ada and Kade to school and kindy. So great to see the Wairarapa plains and to visit Martinborough for the first time. Another 2 day rest coming up!


Good morning Wairarapa!

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