Mountains, but quicker

That's why I like mountain biking. It means you can go to the mountains but do them quick and fast. You get to experience the wonder of the hills and get some serious speed too. Yeeeeeeeeah!

Yesterday I cycled from Greymouth to Blackball, the start of the famous Croesus tramping track, 25km away. New Zealand, being full of switched-on people, have made lots of these great trails available to mountain bikers as well, which is fantastic. Some of the trails are closed during peak months to bikers, but that's certainly preferable to them not being open to bikers at all.

The route from Blackball snakes up 19km or so to Ces Clarke Hut, 900m higher up, just above the bushline. The biking up was through beautiful forest. Some of it was quite hard and unrideable, but I knew that with each metre gained I would be adding to the smile factor on the way back down.

I stayed the night at Ces Clarke hut, the halfway point for trampers doing the Croesus track in two days. My next day's ride would take me back by the same route that I had come up however, since carrying on on the Croesus track is a bit hard on a bike. I met some great people at this hut - a couple of New Zealanders (one an ex-Brit, as a surprising number of them seem to be!) - who gave me lots of good advice on places to go and things to do in New Zealand. It's great to meet like minded people in these huts - you end up being thrown together with them and there's nothing to do but talk and share experiences with each other.











This morning I came down from the hut to Blackball, and then on back to Greymouth. The descent was terrific - virtually all top class singletrack. I'm pleased with my bike - so far it seems to be happy to do both touring and mountain biking. Long may that continue.



Tomorrow I'm starting the ride down to Franz Josef, 174km away. For the time being I'm enjoying my time at what must be one of the best backpacking hostels in the world. It was recommended to me by Tim, a mate from Cotswold, and it has a spa, sauna, free bike and kayak hire and quite possibly the nicest hostel communal area I've ever seen. (It's called Global Village and is in Greymouth, if anyone wants to know where to stay if they're heading here).

New Zealand is wide

At least that's what I realised, when I started cycling across it!

I picked up my bike in Christchurch last Wednesday, and after tinkering about with it for a day or so and mentally preparing myself, I set off on my trip to Greymouth on the West Coast last Friday.

Cycle touring is something quite different from the cycling that I'm used to, namely lightweight XC (cross-country). For flexibility, I decided to buy a mountain bike (so that I could, when I liked, take off the paniers and go mountain biking), with some modifications. I had the tyres changed so that they'd work well on both roads and off-road, I added panier racks and bags, and I got a stand installed. Then I was off! This is what my complete set up with all my luggage looks like:



The first day I covered 70km, as I had intended. The next day I set off up to Porter's Pass. It's quite high!



The way up to Porter's Pass was incredibly punishing, and several times I had to walk the bike up. I'm just not used to lugging myself plus many kilos of luggage up big hills like this! Then I set off down the other side. That was initially quite fun, but when I realised that the prevailing North Westerly wind was actually causing me to need to pedal down hill to keep up momentum, it all got a bit frustrating! I decided that I wasn't going to make the the further 62km to Arthurs Pass in that one day. The scenery was beautiful but the hills were plentiful and steep, and the wind was strong and blowing precisely the wrong way. When you have fully laden paniers on the back of your bike you don't have all that much ability to slip through wind without it holding you back. I was beginning to understand why my touring guide suggested doing this ride the other way round!



I decided there and then that I would make things easier for myself, and extend my proposed 3 day trip to more like 4 or 5 days. The next morning I set off for Arthurs Pass from Lake Pearson, and being only 35km I arrived at AP quite early. I decided to reward my effort by staying overnight at Arthurs Pass, where I ended up undertaking a two day tramp with an Austrian and a German. I had originally intended to do this tramp when I was last in AP but the weather didn't hold. This seemed like a nice opportunity to do it, and a timely break from cycling too.



I finished the tramp on Tuesday and set off from AP yesterday morning, intending to do the remaining 103km to Greymouth in two days.



I rolled in to Greymouth this morning, a little tired but incredibly happy with myself. I had just cycled across New Zealand! All in, the ride was 257km. At times I had felt incredibly cross and upset that things (specifically the wind) weren't going my way. But now I'm really glad I've done it, and I'm thinking of now cycling down the west coast for a while. However, before I do that I'm going to do some mountain biking! There're some great mountains to bike up round here, and now I'm really glad I went for a mountain bike instead of a road bike. There's something very satisfying about lugging yourself and all your travelling belongings along the way with you, going from tramp to tramp or mountain bike ride to mountain bike ride. I'm going to do some riding in this area, and then head south where I'll be meeting my family in a couple of weeks. Better get going then!

Trampin' n tourin'

New Zealand suits me down to the ground because it's a nation of 'trampers', ie hairy people who go walking in the mountains all the time. I'm not hairy, but I like to go walking, so I'm generally accepted by these people. I met a few nice trampers when I went tramping in an area of the Southern Alps called Arthur's Pass National Park. It is a testament to the quality of the mountains in New Zealand that APNP is actually one of the less popular places to visit, but you can see from some of these photos below that it's a spectacular area.

I really love New Zealand, but in some respects it's not half as easy to travel in as South America. Obviously the English language element to NZ is an advantage for me, but in all other respects I have found it more difficult. For one thing, you actually have to book buses and hostels in advance. This is quite a foreign concept to me. In South America, if you want to travel to the other end of the country, you simply get on a bus, pay the nice man or lady on the bus, and then get off several hours/landslides/coups later. What's more, in South America it only costs you between USD 1 and USD 3 per hour of your journey. Here, you have to book it the day before and spend getting on for ten quid for a 2.5 hour journey. Nightmare!

Expenses and the requirement to think ahead aside, New Zealand is a great country. Though, I'm not quite sure how lucky New Zealanders realise they are. Two days ago, when I was hitchiking back from my tramp to my hostel with a lovely elderly New Zealand lady, she remarked to me how the country was going downhill, since nowadays they were letting in far too many people. She lamented the fact that her beautiful country was becoming overcrowded. Quite distressed at this news, I asked her what the population had lately risen to. 'Well', she said ('Well' came out 'Will'), 'We were at about 3, yis, 3 million. Now I think we're nearing 4 million.' What a joy it must be to have the population of half of London living in a country larger than the whole of the UK.

It's a beautiful country too. And the network of backcountry huts that are scattered around the mountains means that every overnight tramper can have a comfortable night while they're out in the wilds. I did a five day tramp around APNP, and took these photos.











Barker Hut, in the last shot, was in possession of a toilet with surely one of the best views in the world. The toilet was missing a door, which meant that whilst relieving yourself you had the choicest view over a glistening glacier hanging under a jagged-edged peak.

Enough of the faecetious [sic] remarks; let me tell you about a little plan of mine. You see, further to my comments about buses, I feel that bussing around NZ is a foolish idea. One alternative would be to do what lots of travellers do and buy a car for 3 months, and then sell it before I leave. But I have a much more cunning plan: namely to buy a bike. You see, New Zealand doesn't seem all that big, and it's incredibly bike friendly, so I feel that I might as well regain some fitness, and have lots of fun, by riding my bike around as a means of transport. I visited the superbly named 'Around Again' second hand bike store in Christchurch earlier today, and I've managed to sort myself out a bike fitted out with all the touring goodies. I'm looking forward to picking it up tomorrow; it has paniers, panier bags, a helmet, a pump and various other things. Hence, as of tomorrow, I hope to join the rank of 'New Zealand bike tourers'. I can't wait!

Check back next week for exciting pictures of me trying to make it up alpine passes on two wheels...

New Zealand

I'm in New Zealand! It's all different! Here are some things regarding New Zealand about which I am particularly excited:

They drive on the left
Christchurch has a district called St Albans
Everyone is really friendly, polite and helpful
The have Her Majesty The Queen on their money
Everything is clean and shiny
It smells like England
You can't get in to your room till 12, and reception isn't open 24 hours
They do a good old English breakfast
There are parks everywhere
They have GOOD OLD BOURNVILLE MADE CADBURY'S CHOCOLATE
They have a FISH AND CHIPS VAN
The computers smell like the ones at Birmingham university's learning centre
The colon is in the right place on the keyboard and in order to attain an @ sign you need not perform the typing equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time.

I already really like the place, and I'm looking forward to relaxing from jet lag here in Christchurch for a couple of days before deciding which mountains to go to.

Yesterday I caught a flight from Santiago over the Pacific Ocean to Auckland. The flight was brilliant - I haven't slept so much on a flight ever before. I found that they had Pink Floyd's Pulse in the in-flight music selection, so with the aid of that and an eye mask I dropped off immediately. I love flying so much - I just love the idea of getting on a plane and flying over a whole ocean.

Before my flight yesterday I caught up with my Australian friend Nina, who is going to be spending the next five months in Santiago pretending to be a student. In reality she's going to be 'studying' mountaineering and Italian, a language she already speaks. We spent most of the afternoon swapping anti Australian/British jokes which was most delightful.

Due to the fact that my flight took off on the 2nd March and arrived on the 4th March, I decided to award my achievement at spending absolutely no money on the 3rd by treating myself to a full English breakfast. It was shockingly expensive at 5 pounds, but I suppose I'm going to have to get used to that. And the sausages were real sausages, and the bacon was greasy, and there were HASH BROWNS. It was worth far more than what I paid for it. What's more, the waitress smiled all the time (not in an annoying fake-smile way), and thanked me for my order. New Zealanders seem very happy people. (But I suppose I might be if I was luckily enough to be born in such a beautiful country). I'm very much looking forward to exploring and finding out more about this great country.