Wonderful fellow-Brompton-folding-bike-owner’s email today from my old Dart Centre friend and colleague in snowed-in New York Bruce Shapiro. “Mark – I have one more reason to be grateful for your introducing me to Brompton bikes all those years ago: As you probably know we were hit by a blizzard overnight. I am hunkered down at home … Read more …
Cycling
Farewell NZ – for the time being – after wine in Hawke’s Bay & awesome canoeing down the Whanganui River
Well, after five glorious cycling and canoeing weeks, the last two with Kat and Mela, it’s time to leave New Zealand, with a last blast of images (fuller set here on Google+ as usual), and some concluding thoughts about what has to have been the best cycling tour ever (though could of course have been … Read more …
Soooo close!!! To doing the mountain bike circuit…. Vid on YouTube
You might enjoy – more than I did at the final denouement, though we had a fabulous day – this video, captured by Kat, of yours truly attempting (about 20th go) a circuit of the mountain bike obstacle course at PanPac forest nr Napier in NZ. View video, then photo….. Enjoy! Read more …
NZ biking – a final two-day solo ride along Forgotten World Highway, through spectacular rainforest, and… sheep. Oodles of.
OK, my name is Mark and I’m an internet addict. And this is positively (probably) my last post (sounds of trumpet) from solo biking in NZ, with a map to show you where I started and where, on this last Saturday in 2012, I’ve ended up. Which is, slap bang in the middle of the … Read more …
Daughter Kat and Mount Taranaki both reached. 900 miles in 16 days. One chuffed psychlotherapist.
As always, fuller set of photos here. I said I probably wouldn’t blog again very soon, but rounding a corner yesterday on the final stretch into Kat’s home province of Taranaki, seeing the local volcano looming above the clouds just stopped me in my tracks, and I couldn’t resist sharing a couple of views. So, … Read more …
NZ Biking: Days 13-15, Nelson in S Island to Bulls in North
First, for a fullish set of photos from today, follow this link… So, approaching the end of the heavy riding of this New Zealand tour (just 85 miles or so to go tomorrow, bringing me in 16 days to nearly 900 miles in total since Queenstown, before joining Kat and Mela for Christmas and then … Read more …
Murchison to Motueka and on to Nelson – 200k in 2 days & wit wit wit.
Before I go ANY further, you must listen to what’s been waking me up pretty much every morning at five for the past two weeks of camping. Tui birds chattering to each other, and quite clearly having a conversation. The most lovely – unsleepable-to – sound, captured on my mobile phone today. About a minute … Read more …
Day 10, 64 Miles from Westport to Murchison. 520 miles in total so far.
Two things to capture today – 1) how the actual biking is going, and 2), I think I’ve cracked how to post photos in sufficient detail without taking three hours to upload them to WordPress. As some of you will have already been notified, I’m putting a daily selection up on Google+, and the link … Read more …
Swapped bike for chopper over Mount Cook: 250 km from Haast to Ross…
Right. A bit of a delay in posting, thanks to helicopter flights over Mount Cook (read on), some 160 miles of utterly amazing cycling over three days, a need for early nights and a severe paucity of internet and even mobile phone connections down New Zealand’s West Coast. There’s a lot to report, so I’ll … Read more …
Days Three and Four – reached the coast
Greetings, friends and relations, from Middle Earth. There have been moments these last two days, my third and fourth in NZ pedalling first into a ferocious hidwund (sorry, headwind) some 45 miles from Wanaka to Makarora, and then today a further 50 miles through blazing heat and increasingly rainforesty mountains to Haast on the South … Read more …