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 …
Travel
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 …
Made It! Over Highest metalled road in NZ
Boy, do I need a faster laptop for my next big bike journey (and maybe some classier shades?) Lovely little Acer netbook, but it gets into the biggest spin (as Sue found out in India in the spring) when you ask it to do more than two things at once. It’s taken me nearly three … Read more …
Arrowtown – with probably the world’s most expensive phone booth
Read on to the end to find out about the phone box, but here at the top, let me put my cards straight on the table today. Long-distance cycling has to be the happiest-making activity on the planet. I remember a Guardian chap (Mike Carter, written about before on this blog) describing an anti-clockwise trip … Read more …
One week left, Raven packed – and ready to star in The Standard
So, Raven is readied, panniers, tent and bags test-mounted and photographs taken for an article on the pending adventure scheduled for next Thursday’s local Standard newspaper in the Cotswolds. Fame at last… Below right is how my study looked with everything piled up in one great heap before being packed. (Note that Myshkin, aka Wussum … Read more …