1st day
Clyde to Omakau
We cycle the 152 kms rail trail in NZ over 4 days. We have booked the trip through Bike It Now who organised accommodation, provide Trek mountain bikes with very big tyres and arranged for our bags to be transferred each day. The bags get there before us!
We start at the Bike It Now shop at Clyde and get a briefing about the bikes from Duncan. Then Lois takes us for a coffee at the local bank cafe and describes the trip, safety issues and generally anything we need to know. She suggests we start the trip along the river to Alexandra and get lunch at a Café there.
So we head off as she suggested. We find a really nice cafe – Café Rossi at Alexandra. Good service, good food at a good price. Lots of oldies so we feel at home. We then head off to find the rail trail and pass it. How is that possible?
We retrace losing a bit more time. We had left Clyde at 11am and with lunch stop a wee bit too long we know we could be late.
The large tyres work well on the smooth gravel but its not long before we have sore muscles backsides and arms. Maybe we’re too old for this.
We meet this lady from Invercargill who has built this mini caravan. Its amazing. She has an electric bike so that helps. It’s big enough to sleep one.
A bit further on is Chatto Creek Tavern where we stop for a break and a drink. There’s a group of blokes drinking and it looks like they have been going hard at it all day. They are sure to be duck shooters.
The next 12 kms to Omakau is the steepest on the whole trip. We struggle but make it just in time to Mandy’s at 5pm. Mandy is waiting for us, shows us our room which is perfect. We are the last bike riders in.
We stride down the 50m to the local pub and have a good meal.
As it’s the day before duck shooting starts the pub is very busy.
2nd day
Omakau to Wedderburn
We have a good breakfast provided in the room and head for Wedderburn. We meet a group of 3 women who are riding electric bikes. Just as we take this shot one of the ladies falls as she is stopping and hurts her eye. As we ride the track they often zip past us with their extra boost of power. We later discover that their group is the mum with her 2 daughters.
We find a coffee stop at Lauder. We stop not noticing that the small coffee shop is closed. We walk around to the front of the pub which appears closed. The publican walks around dressed very badly, says hi and complains about a late night and hasn’t cleaned the pub yet. He is happy to get us coffees though.
The other group of 4 arrive. They um and ah. When they walk into the pub he tells them off for leaving the door open. They can’t take that and leave 😅.
Derek (Knobby) made the coffees, sat down and talked about the business, his life story. The coffee was great but the story was better.
Although today is a climb on a small incline we are quite exhausted and sore from riding. Julianne gets despondent as we can ride at about 10km/h. We walk through two tunnels today.
We are exited to reach the highest point near the end of the day. We roll down the last 6 kms to Wedderburn cottages.
We are booked in for a meal at the local Wedderburn pub. It is busy with many locals so we order drinks at the bar. While we are standing there a local named Beastie puts his jacket on the bar next to Julianne and starts chatting. Some friends come over to assist him – the next second he falls flat on his back. He was not worried as his friends escorted him out. I hoped he was not driving. He was very drunk.
Julianne
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