Days 3 and 4
Westport To Hanmer Springs To Fox Glacier- 830km(518mi)
Waking to grey skies and rain, I jumped on the Trumpy and ducked down to New World and picked up some bacon and eggs, plus some bread rolls. Having spied a bbq in the garden of the motel I thought that cooking our own breakfast using the utensils in the well stocked motel room would be a far cheaper alternative to buying four bacon and egg rolls at a cafe. New Zealand is actually quite expensive! As it turned out we had enough for two each with some bacon left over. We were soon as full as a public school !
I haven't mentioned my riding gear yet. I had purchased an RST all season 2 piece suit for the trip and had only taken the tags off of it as we were loading our bikes in Christchurch. This was supposed to guarantee no rain....Anyway, you could say that it was untried. Today, it would get a baptism of fire..er..water.
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| Sorry for the crappy |
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| photos, but the suit is awesome! |
The other unknown was how would the bikes handle in the wet? Wayne from Paradise had mentioned to me that the tyres on the Trumpy were just as good in the wet as in the dry. Now I wasn't sure if he meant they were rubbish in the dry and hence no worse in the wet or if he was just planting a seed in my head. Riding in the rain is all about confidence. Either way, I would be taking it pretty easy until I got a feel for them.
We made our way out to Cape Foulwind to check out the seal colony but finding it quite a walk from the bike park, we decided to simply press on in case it rained all day. We had accommodation booked in Hanmer Springs for the night and there was a bit of riding in between. This didn't stop some horsing around at the Cape though.
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| Courtesey The Road To Nowhere |
On a positive note, my gear seemed to be be watertight and warm.....unlike my boot which had trickled water in from somewhere.
We beetled along for a while, before seeing an amazing photo opportunity that was worth risking wet cameras. The weather really was pretty crap but being warm and (mostly) dry I was quite enjoying the ride with the wet coast's spectacular vistas.
Not long after we stopped at Punakaiki to see the Pancake Rocks, an unusual geological phenomena. Basically the rocks look like stacks of pancakes. There are a few blow holes that were pumping but there was so much water flying around the place anyway that I wasn't overly impressed. It was late morning and we were STILL looking for good coffee though.
The road straightened out a bit now and began to dry so that we had a pleasant ride into Greymouth. Here we stopped for a bite to eat and to get a decent coffee. This done we were back out the road headed toward Reefton and eventually Lewis Pass. It looked to be dairying and livestock farming along here with views off to rain capped hills in the distance. Very nice.
Stopping to take a photo while on a group ride can be frustrating for the non-photographers. As I saw some opportunities and pulled over, a few minutes later Wayne would come riding back to see if I was ok. "Yep, just taking a photo" was my slightly embarrased response. They soon came to ignore me when I disappeared off the back, which was fine with me.
We stopped for fuel in Reefton, which looked like a pleasant town that could do with an explore. That wasn't to happen as this was a tear-arsed tour of the South Island with no time to look at anything. I had a slight moment at the service station when moving my bike from the bowsers. As I moved the bike, my helmet was on the mirror. Just as I stopped it decided to jump ship! I managed to get my foot under it to break it's fall but then it rolled about 5 metres across the forecourt. Of course this scratched nothing but the visor! D'oh!!
As we rode out of Reefton, the heavens began to open again making for a cool, wet ride. As we climbed the mountain the temperature began to drop. It got down to about 10C (50F) at its lowest but I simply activated the heated grips and was toasty. My tyres really did seem to be quite good in the wet as we were motoring along and this was a very heavy bike, what with my kitchen sink in the panniers! The only real issue was with visor fogging, making for some exciting corners! Have a laugh at me a I go from visor closed, to open, to closed, to open, to.....you get the idea, in this montage.
To be honest, I was concentrating so hard on being smooth I didn't even notice the "Pass" bit of this road. It just felt like we were riding through a winding forest road, with no discernable climbing or descending. However, the scenery very quickly changed to open vistas across azure rivers to distant mountains. BAM! We were back in Middle Earth!
The rain had eased somewhere around here and the road was now dry. Combine this with jaw dropping views and that last 50km(32mi) into Hanmer Springs took a few hours to complete!
Bye Bye Rain!
Geoff and Steve
Chillertek motoring by.
Looking back up the Walau River valley.
We were staying at a backpackers tonight in Hanmer Springs. It turned out to be a normal house in a residential street and I was a bit dubious.
Jack In The Green was actually a very clean, well run backpackers. We had our own separate unit and hey, what was that on the lawn? Another BBQ! Once we had offended the locals and tourists alike by exposing our lilly white skin at the hot springs we shopped up a storm then cooked ourselves a decent meat and one veg meal, all washed down by some DB Lager, all for bugger all $. Well, 3 of us did. Steve apparently doesn't eat peas.......the little girl.
Jack in the Green's....green. BBQ at far right.
