Wednesday to Friday of our first full week tandeming the Tour Aotearoa has brought us, slowly, from Kaitaia at the bottom of the Cape Reinga peninsula across VERY hilly bits of northernmost New Zealand to the delightfully-named Dargaville, the country’s sweet potato capital, would you believe, with a colourful history of immigration from Croatia. After … Read more …
New Zealand
Flying Tonight – having tried to check in to wrong, cancelled Qantas flight
Rule one of flying, esp with code share. Check in with correct Airline. Emirates (ours) is flying tonight (sounds like a Chinese chippie). Qantas, which we tried to board, isn’t. So, DaisyTwo is accepted through to Auckland in her plastic bag, and we’re about to head out on the adventure of a lifetime. Having first … Read more …
A fortnight till lift-off
Quite how we’re going to get all of this (and more, out of frame, though not the bed) into four panniers, one barrel bag and one handlebar bag is perhaps a question for Iniduoh – Houdini in reverse (terrible joke).But yesterday in two weeks, Feb 3, Jutta (hoping by then for recovery from a nasty … Read more …
A month to go
So, with a month and a day to go till we fly off to Auckland, the Rory Peck Trust’s page is now live, encouraging their supporters to chip in and sponsor our madcap 2000-mile tandem adventure to and through New Zealand. With warm thanks to so many of you all, Jutta and I are already nearly … Read more …
Tour Aotearea – 3000km the length of New Zealand, Feb/March 2015
Nearly 40 years after receiving our first tandem for our wedding in March 1977, we’re taking our heavyweight long-distance tourer Daisy2 to NZ/Aotearoa to cycle from Cape Reinga at the top of North Island to Bluff at the bottom of South Island. We’re raising funds for the wonderful Rory Peck Trust, uniquely dedicated as it says … Read more …
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 …
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 …