New Zealand Reflections

Three weeks cycling on South Island

The evening sun colours Mount Tasman

"If you live in North Wales, why do you want to come here?". That an airport customs officer would engage in friendly banter confirmed New Zealand as a welcoming country but we'd come for rain forests, glaciers, lakes, mountains, waterfalls and quiet roads. This trip was to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary - our daughter Sarah was away at university and our parents agreed to share looking after our son Rowan while we took off on a three week trip. Our expectations were sky high and we weren't disappointed.

Flights

The route

Three weeks isn't long so we confined ourselves to South Island, making a clockwise loop south-west to Te Anau then across, up the west coast and back to Christchurch. We decided to take the bus to Lake Tekapo to avoid the Christchurch suburbs and the Canterbury plain, cycle round to Greymouth and return via the TranzAlpine, rated one of the top 5 rail journeys in the world. We compiled a draft itinerary and booked the first two nights at Christchurch central YHA hostel. This was to give us a full weekday to sort out any problems with panniers or bikes or to recover from the long flight.

Preparing the bikes for the road

Christine splashed out on a fancy hand-built job from Roberts of Croydon. I stuck with my two year old Dawes World Tour, veteran of two Sustrans routes, and took it in to Beics Castell of Caernarfon, our local dealer who sold it to me. I've never had a puncture on this bike but the tyres were looking worn so it seemed prudent to replace them. Luke and Kevin recommended Schwalbe Marathon XR and gave it a thorough service. I took one of the old tyres as a spare while Christine bought a folding tyre. Both bikes behaved faultlessly and we suffered no punctures. We met two people who'd wrecked their tyres so taking spares was probably a good precaution.

Preparing the bikes for the air

From home to Tekapo

Friday 25th February 2000 arrived and we took the train to Manchester Airport, removed pedals and bottle cages, turned the handlebars, taped on the bubblewrap then found BA had no bike bags after all. We took their advice to check our panniers all the way to Christchurch but our bikes only to Heathrow - there we'd get the bags and check them in to Christchurch. This worked out fine and our bikes were handled so carefully that my chain wasn't even dislodged! The flight was on time and as comfortable as economy class long haul can be - as we reached the coast the mist suddenly cleared to reveal stunning views of the treeless southern alps then the fertile Canterbury plain on the approach to Christchurch.

We cycled the 11km from the airport to the youth hostel, where they agreed to store our bike packaging until our return. After cleaning ourselves up we repaired to the Mainstreet Café at 840 Colombo Street, vegetarian like us and so good we ate there on each of our three nights in the city. The Emerson's organic pils from Dunedin was an impressive introduction to New Zealand beer, a match for the best German lagers.

After an early night we felt fine and used the YHA's booking facilities to arrange our exit and return transport before spending a relaxing day exploring this spacious green city. The cafés are great - good coffee, imaginative fresh fruit cocktails, sweet and savoury muffins. The Atomic Shuttle leaves at 07:00 so once again we hit the sack early.

We loaded our bikes - this bus takes only two so we were lucky to be able to book it at such short notice - and sat back as our driver took us through the endless suburbs and flat farmland before rising through undulating partially forested country to Lake Tekapo. This had been a very good move, saving us precious time on first dull then hilly terrain. At the Information Centre we booked accommodation and bus trip for tomorrow, had a long chat with some Canadian cyclists, ate our sandwiches and were ready to go.

Tekapo is home to Nigel Rushton, author of the indispensible Pedallers Paradise guides - you can stay at Nigel's place but it was the middle of the day and we had a lot of exploring to do.

The tour