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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]