The Big Year of Travel: Otago Rail Trail

Well we were off on another cycling adventure as Chelsea asked me where I wanted to go for Easter and I responded quickly and deliberately with, "BIKE TRIP". This year with back to back long weekends and a company day, we were able to use two work holidays and be away for a week. This lent itself perfectly to the Otago rail trail, a trail featured whenever you talk about cycling in New Zealand.

As this is not just a hop in the car type trip, some planning was required with accommodations, bike rentals and flights (but cycling enthusiasts can ask us for those details). We decided to do a supported trip where our luggage was transported but we could pick our days, distances and accomodations.

The tour company picked us up in Queenstown and transported us to be fitted for our bikes at the starting city of the tour, Clyde. It was in Clyde that we met Fletch from Bike It Now, the lady that had been in contact with us over email. She took us for a coffee with another Australian couple doing the trail and went over our itinerary. We had arranged for our baggage to be dropped off each day at our accommodation and Fletch went over where all the accommodations we had booked were and better yet, things to do along the ride. She was a great person to tell us about the trail and even recommended we do the first part off the tail along the river (from Clyde to Alexandra) on a single track as we had mountain bikes.

The bikes:

Trek Roscoes with a 1x10 gear selection (meaning no shifting at the front) and semi fat tyres and the fattest tyres i have ridden to date. For the Canadians reading this, I now spell tyres with a "y" apparently. The bikes were brand new and pretty slick with the Schwalbe tyres. They were a hard tail but with the big tyres, the ride was pretty soft and the tread stuck too just about everything except when you really locked up the disc brakes...as Chelsea jumped every time I did it. They were equipped with a rear rack and they gave us two rear panniers each...for carrying!

Bike It Now - This is the company that Chelsea worked with to make our trip as amazing as it was

Back to the trail:

Clyde to Lauder

As Fletch finished up with us, we readied ourselves and headed off. Day 1 would be from Clyde to Lauder, a distance of 44km and the extra river part made it just over 50. The first thing we both noticed was how much it felt like being back in Canada as all the leaves were changing from green to different yellows, oranges and reds. It was the best time of year to ride the trail and the single track along the river highlighted this. Our first stop along the way was 17km after Alexandra at Chatto Creek tavern for a late lunch. This was one of my favourite places to stop for a meal during the whole ride as the tavern was right on the path and they had a parking lot for bikes. It also had an amazing seafood chowder with crisscut fries and to rehydrate, local beer! As we hadn't eaten much all day, we definitely ordered too much food and the portions were big. A great feed as the Kiwi's say and we headed off as we had 19km more to go for the day to Lauder.

The beginning of the ride!

This was the end of the recommended river section vs. rail section from Clyde to Alexandra

Alexandra to Chatto Creek

Chatto Creek lunch stop. Right on the Trail, with a bike parking lot.

We finally arrived just before 5pm at our accommodation for the night, the Lauder School House where we were greeted by Esmé who showed us our room, the sports shed. The sports shed was just that, a little shack behind the school that just fit a double bed. it actually was really cool to stay in. It was also great cause we could park our bikes right outside and under cover. That evening we walked to the only place to eat in town, the Lauder hotel where Knobby the bartender and Fred the cat served us....well Fred just required pets from Knobby as he perched on his shoulder. The beer seemed to be flowing way too fast that night as it generally does when it is on tap...Knobby understood my needs and Fred supported the cause.

Lauder School House: The Sports Shed

Knobby and my first beer

The next morning, we had a nice toast and jam breakfast and pushed off as it was going to be about the same distance and the most scenic part of the trail so we wanted to take as many stops as needed to capture the scenery.

As we left Lauder, Esmé offered to take a nice picture of us as she realized that most pictures you get when there is only two of you, is one of the other.

Lauder School House B&B

Lauder to Ranfurly

Starting our Day 2: Just leaving Lauder School House

It was another beautiful day however it was definitely a very chilly start to the morning. Luckily One of us had bought a new biking coat and she reminded me how nice it was that day. I am so happy that it was just the perfect coat for the ride!

Convinced another couple to take a picture of us

The day was amazing and we pedalled through the Poolburn gorge which included two long dark tunnels and two amazingly scenic bridge crossings. The longest tunnel was 230 metres with a curve in it so you couldn't see the end when you started and with our eyes transitioning from the sunny day, we could barely see anything...it was very cool. Another highlight of the ride was all the schist stone that Chelsea kept insisting i put in my pannier to take home as a reminder of the ride...I declined because Chelsea had empty panniers which for some reason remained empty with all this talk of Schist stone keepsakes...:-)

Chelsea crossing the Manuherikia river bridge

Chelsea is ready to enter the Abyss!

Wow, what a beautiful way to exit a tunnel!

Tunnel 2

Poolburn Viaduct Bridge Crossing

Can you see me

The highest point of the ride! All downhill from here.

As engineers, we couldn't pass on the opportunity to stop at Hayes engineering (pretty much on the trail) for lunch. Hayes was quite the NZ inventor whose claim to fame was the wire strainer for farming fences. We toured the grounds and had a nice warm lunch as it was a chilly ride.

Hayes

Temperature dropped after Hayes and it was getting misty

As we finished 50+ km day and arrived at Lauder in the early afternoon we stopped at the train station and information center. Ranfurly is known for one thing, its 1930s art deco look but we will remember it as our most favourite accommodation's....The Maniototo Lodge. Carolyn, the owner greeted us on our arrival and showed us her beautiful 1900s renovated vicarage. Chelsea loved the place and definitely noticed the for sale sign on the front lawn. A fireplace in each room and it had many modern amenities without losing the heritage of the vicarage. It was also the best dinner we ate as Carolyn cooked us Salmon, kumara potato salad (the best kumara salad i have had) and fresh veggies. As she travels to south east Asia often and her husband is from there, all the food was tastefully spiced from that region and everyone's plate was empty by the end of the night. I say everyone because we dined with another couple Cosmus and Susan and our conversation, wine and food was great. Quite the memorable night! A notable side note is that both Cosmus and myself share a love for biking........ and "Apparently" a substantial weakness of empathy for wives that are in pain after riding. Both Chelsea and Susan agreed that we needed to work on this. I'd like to take this sentence to thank Chelsea for treating me to a wonderful bike trip and i hope she enjoyed the time as much as i did as we really lucked out in scenery, weather and good company....😍

This was the best place in the house after a chilly day

Ranfurly to Tiroiti

Ranfurly to tiroiti was a much shorter day. While we could have probably pushed to finish, I couldn't pass up on the opportunity to sleep in a converted rail carriage. The pictures speak a thousand words in this case and we had an afternoon of exploring our accomodation and playing with the dog Meiko? or atleast that is what we think she was called.

Just before our accommodation we stopped one last time

The bridge is the bike trail. We pulled of it to make our way to the miners cottage rail carriage

The rail carriage!

Meiko? Not 100% on the name but our security for the evening

The beautiful scenery around the cottage

Chelsea picked the wrong camouflage

Spot the heart

Tiroiti to MiddleMarch

We left a bit later as we only had about 30 km to cover and since we decided to stay in MiddleMarch that evening, there was really no rush. As we pushed off, the owners of our Tiroiti accommodation (Vivien and Gordon) told us to stop before the Hyde tunnel and hike down to the river where the Chinese had dug a diversion tunnel. Reading the signage, it explained that early European settlers salted this part of the river with gold and then sold mining claims to unsuspecting Chinese immigrants. The Chinese built the diversion to aid in their mining efforts and all the time they put into it never made them a cent. It was a really nice walk down and in biking shoes, quite the achievement. Chelsea saw a skink on the path!

This was the diversion tunnel. It is just below all the tree branches

The trail down to the tunnel

Mounting back on the bikes after this little hiking detour, we were once again on the trail to the finish. The last part of the ride went quickly as there we had a nice tail wind and both of us were eager for some lunch and a cold beverage. We did make one stop to share a moment of silence for the victims of "Straw Cutting", where 21 people lost their lives in 1943 from a train derailment.

The last push to the end had us riding just south of the rock and pillar mountains which were very pronounced peaks of rock and/or schist pillars. If you are curious, I again declined all suggestions of taking large pieces of schist.

Hyde, Last stop before MiddleMarch

We could see MiddleMarch approaching in the distance, and picked up the pace a bit as someone was quite eager to get her final otago rail trail passport stamp.

Almost There!

MiddleMarch Entry sign

WE FINISHED!

I forgot to mention these stamps until now. We both received a passport book on day 1 which had certain milestones along the trail to stop at. As you stopped at these milestones (ganger sheds - places where railroad workers stayed), you would stamp your passport and learn a bit about that particular shed.

I will explain the sequence of events of the final MiddleMarch stamp:

Chelsea: "I need to find the last stamp, this is soooo exciting"

Chris: "We'll find it, don't worry"

Chelsea: "I think it is there!"

Chris: "Okay, let me get the camera ready to capture it.....Chelsea just wait a second"

Chelsea: "It's it! It's it!"

Chris: "Wait!" In my mind, I know that Chelsea is so excited that she is not paying attention to me telling her to wait.

Chelsea: "If we made it this far and it was missing, i would be pissed." She picks up stamp with grin, opens book, looks at stamp and the grin fades to a pissed look because the stamp part is missing. I did manage to get the camera out and capture this sequence of events...haha. And don't worry, the bike store where we returned our bikes had a backup stamp.

That evening we had pizza and stayed at our second favourite accommodation, the Annandale B&B. Warren and business partner Jerry (a massive tabby cat) had restored the 1900's house and they had very good taste. Warren was one of the hardest workers as he worked at the restaurant in town during the day, then came home to work the B&B and after making sure we were settled and happy, left to his sheep farm. He said he used all the B&B profits towards the house and it really showed.

4 days and over 150kms with perfect weather the whole time. An amazing bike trip and so happy that Chelsea was a trooper and did it with me. What a wonderful wife....but I still won't carry schist stone, :-P.

We were away for a week and some other things we did were:

- Long drive from Christchurch to Queenstown where we went through Tekapo to visit the church we were married at just over a year ago. It was another beautiful day and we stopped for pies in Fairlie for lunch.

- Queenstown visit. Our Air B&B hosts recommended an amazing tramp (hike) where I learned that Chelsea has a mushroom photography obsession, who knew?

Warm Fire for dinner!

We found this place for dinner in Queenstown, reminded us of Spageddy Eddy's (not a typo)

Those are all mushrooms

Top of the tramp over looking lake Lake Wakatipu

- Gold panning at the goldfields mining center near Cromwell. I had really wanted to do this and with my powers of suggestion, convinced Chelsea to. GUESS WHO FOUND GOLD!!!