Regular readers of this blog will have noted a few more posts around bikes and bikepacking creeping in amongst the education and technology posts I usually share. This is going to be a shorter post with mainly some images of a bike ride I completed today on the first day of the Waitangi Weekend.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been three years since I did my first Waitangi Weekend bikepacking trip (on an Ebike that day) – you can read about it here Waitangi Weekend eBike Wandering – February 2021 – SamuelMcNeill.com – and that was the first time I ventured forth on a camping expedition on a bike. Since then I’ve done quite a few, both by myself and with friends. You can read about them here if interested.
I’ve spent this last week following the progress of riders on the Tour Te Waipounamu, an amazing bikepacking race from Cape Farewell at the top of the South Island to Slope Point at the very bottom, a journey of 1330km and 21,000m elevation. Incredibly, the winner completed this in a mindblowing 4 days and 19hrs! Inspired, I decided to head out on by own bikepacking bike for a longer ride today. Here are a few photos of the ride.
Lined up against a row of poplar trees, my green Soma Wolverine blended right in early on in the ride – almost as if it was in stealth mode:
Inside Bottle Lake Forest is a small hill, covering some rubble from collapsed buildings from the 2010-11 earthquakes in Christchurch. As I rode onto the top the sky looked vaguely threatening with low cloud stretching out to the horizon and a yellowish light:
At one point you emerge from the forest and bike near the beach. The tide was high and gently lapping on the beach – there was no one around and it was an incredibly peaceful for a quick photo:
After exiting Bottle Lake Forest I continued on towards the Brooklands Lagoon. This was another area where the earthquakes destroyed a lot of residential houses and now there are few residents who live there. I biked around the lagoon where many birds were flying around or swimming on the water:
I turned west at the river mouth and started heading up the river towards the bridge, catching some views of the swift flowing water:
After crossing the Waimakariri River and cruising through the river town of Kaiapoi, I headed back towards the coast and Pines Beach to join the Pegasus Trail to take me north. I’d previously tried to bike along this once before but it was flooded. Today, the track was in mint condition and with very few people around I was able to enjoy the solitude and beauty of the forest trails:
The Pegasus Trail carries on to Waikuku Beach, but I hooked a left into the town of Pegasus that has a feature man-made lake in the middle of it. Around the lake are miniature beaches with golden sand shipped in and laid down. It was looking very beautiful today:
In the middle of the lake is an island with an artificial waterfall in it that can be reached by a suspension bridge. I didn’t ride out to it today, but snapped this shot:
I grabbed some lunch in Pegasus at around the 50km mark feeling very happy with the ride so far. I headed back to town and through Kaiapoi, crossing the Kaiapoi River at the cute Mandeville bridge:
I continued south and over the Waimakariri River again, this time I headed right of the bridge and further up the river. Some of the trails were a little overgrown at first, including a tree that had fallen over the path at one point:
As I pushed on, things got progressively slower as the path became less defined:
It was slow going on this grass, with some deep ditches under the long grass that I was careful to avoid as they had the potential to throw me over the handlebars! And then, all of a sudden, the path just stopped:
Faced with the prospect of returning back the way I had come or doing some bush bashing to try and get through to the stop bank, I chose the latter. I had to hike a bike through 30-50m of thick bush and then up the stop bank but achieved it without too much difficulty, before heading west into a growing head wind and rain squalls atop the stop bank that is designed to capture and block the water from the Waimakariri when it floods. At various points there were entry points back to the river from stopbank:
This was around the 70km mark and I estimated I still had around 30km to get home, including going through McLeans Island Forest. Amid intermittent showers, the sun emerged lighting up the dry grasses with some spectacular views:
The remainder of the ride took me back behind the airport and home, clocking in at just under 97km for the ride. If you’re interested in the route, check it out on Strava:
I enjoy these longer rides – I deliberately didn’t aim to go fast today and I encountered many different surfaces: roads, gravel, dirt tracks, sand, overgrown grass. My bike took them all on and I saw some beautiful sights on the ride today. It’s a great way to clear your thoughts and forget about daily responsibilities and just enjoy the simple process of pedalling and moving from one place to another.
I did not have a set route for this trip, got lost at one point but with a general idea of the directions I wanted to head I was able to enjoy a very fun day out.
