Westward Ho!

A standout memory from my teaching career was the day that I had to defend William Shakespeare's choice of language from charges of inappropriateness. In The Tempest, Act I, Prospero summons Caliban, his beastly servant.

       '. . . What, ho! Slave! Caliban!

      Thou earth, thou! speak! 

There is no easy translation for 'ho' - though 'hey there' would do the job. To this classroom of teens, however, my attempts at offering alternate meanings were clearly inadequate. They were offended, in a giggly sort of way, that this old timer (Shakespeare, you understand) could use such pejorative language. To be fair, this is Caliban's first appearance in the play. Perhaps his gender was unclear. Perhaps Prospero was indeed looking for a ho . . .

Where am I going with this? Thanks for asking. Westward. Ho. In Bill.

Bill has had a life of his own lately (Bill, you ho!)  so we thought it time to renew family bonds. He has been rented out to couples and families wanting to explore the South Island, via the Mighway platform, which can be best described as Bookabach on wheels.

With two more hires still to come this summer, we seized the chance for a few days away on the West Coast. 

At the end of the Buller Gorge, there is a choice. Left to Greymouth and the glaciers, right to Westport. Left to the tourist trail. Right to empty roads and vast rain-washed skies. 

After a night parked on the beach just north of the Big Smoke, Westport, we continued up the coastal road, turning right at Waimangaroa to travel nine steep kilometers and 130 years back in time. The Denniston plateau,  well known probably thanks to Jenny Pattrick's novels, is another world, high in the sky. We rode our bikes over challenging and unforgiving rocky terrain before the encroaching clouds and precipitation forced us back to Bill and dry clothes. 

Then we wandered around the ghostly remains of the aerial tramway that took coal, on an industrial scale,  from this inhospitable landscape. The lives of the miners and their families were as fraught as you'd imagine. For the twenty years before the road was constructed, the only practicable way down the hill was by coal cart - straight over the edge of the plateau 500 metres above sea level. Some women never left Denniston in those 20 years.

Warning: more history to come.

Sometime during the last millennium, we took a road trip to the Coast with cousins Graham and Julia. This was probably in the 1970s, so picture us as four fresh-faced and naive city-dwelling 20-somethings.

North of the Denniston turnoff lie the three hamlets of Granity, Ngakawau and Hector. They merge into each other now but Ngakawau is the subject of this shuffle down memory lane.

Time for a beer?

After a night in Westport, the four of us planned to visit a distant cousin of Julia's. We drove to Ngakawau early in the morning, pinpointed the house of the distant cousin and knocked on the door, looking forward to a nice cup of tea.

The distant cousin's name is long gone from my memory but his hospitality has become legend. "Would you folk like a beer?" Sigh.

A little further north of Ngakawau, we parked up at Gentle Annie at the mouth of the Mokihinui River, a location better known to overseas tourists than to Kiwis, I suspect. It's a glorious spot, with the added bonus of a very cool cafè,  open 12 hours a day and staffed by wwoofers . It's also near the end of the internationally renowned Old Ghost Road tramping/cycling trail.

Comfy couches, great coffee ....
In the middle of nowhere

It was a leisurely start the next morning. I blame the café and the views. Our destination was the Charming Creek walkway. Yet another testament to the determination of early entrepreneurs to extract as much of our coal and timber resources as possible, this 9km track followed the original railway up into the hills above Ngakawau.

The rails and hardwood sleepers made this a bone-shaking challenge for cyclists. Which is perhaps why we were not only the oldest on the track but the only ones on bikes.

Charming Creek 

DOC staff were hard at work, maintaining the trail and re-roofing an old hut. This walk was also on the to-do list for overseas tourists, in the main young backpackers travelling in campers.

By this, our third day on bikes, legs and shoulders had had enough.  Well, mine anyway. I can't speak for Tour Leader.

Bill took us back down the coast road and into the Buller Gorge, a spectacular journey in its own right. Our final stop was at Lyell, a DOC campsite home for the night to cyclists about to start their Old Ghost Road adventure . . . and to a particularly persistent breed of sandfly.  The rain arrived shortly after we did. Tour Leader gave up on the idea of a wee ride on the track. We battened down the hatches and read our books, pretending we didn't miss the internet one little bit.

They have smashing sunsets in this part of the world 

Van life

I've found my MacGuffin: The innocuous object, a favourite

of film makers, that begins the story-telling but will be of no actual importance to the narrative.

It has glowered in a handy crevice in our Transit van for the past three weeks, daring us to pick it up. It had a few outings in Amsterdam but its services haven't been required since crossing the Channel.

Loch Earn Railway Path,  Scotland

As an opening gambit, you can't beat the weather, especially in the nation that invented such conversations. When we first arrived, the Scots were quick to point out that they had had SUCH a hot summer. Up until yesterday, would you believe? Things have warmed up a little since but Surly Sunscreen Stick remains safe in his crevice.

This trip to Amsterdam and the UK has been all about the bike. Planning couldn't have been simpler. We would leave home with our bikes packed into their travel bags. After the Amsterdam interlude, we would catch a ferry to Newcastle and pick up our hire van to transport ourselves, luggage and bikes north to Scotland and eventually, via Wales, to London for the flight home. We had some waypoints in mind but having the van for three weeks has allowed plenty of last-minute decision making. And it has been great fun. We've visited friends in stunningly remote hamlets. We've travelled on highways and byways (a polite term for footpaths masquerading as B roads), discovering places that we would never have come across if we were not in search of riding opportunities.

Glenlivet bike trails, near the distillery we didn't visit

There's nostalgia involved as well. We've done van life before.

In 1984, we followed many Kiwis before us and headed off to London for our "OE".  When it came time to plan the summer jaunt around the Continent, we took ourselves down to the Hungerford Bridge van market and began the search for the ideal home on wheels. This informal market is where Antipodean sellers camped out each day after having "done" Europe, waiting for their vans' next owners to turn up. We prowled the street for a week or so, looking for the best van available, and ended up buying ourselves a lemon. Of course.

Before we had even left England, the bed collapsed. That was easily fixed, in the car park of a DYI store. Once we crossed the Channel, things went well, so long as we remembered to top up with oil more often than with petrol. By the time we reached Yugoslavia, the oil situation upgraded itself to an oil crisis. We limped back to Germany (it was a VW Kombi after all) for a mechanic's diagnosis. No dictionary required: Motor kaput. 

Derwent Water, Lake District 

The starter motor was also dodgy. At times, it required some manual help involving a screwdriver under the van to get itself going. In the Cold War environment, crossing the border from East to West was a tense business. Military jets were a constant presence overhead. Convoys of Soviet vehicles rumbled by.  East German guards checked papers thoroughly and rolled mirrors under vehicles, checking for escaping comrades. It was no time for mechanical problems. But sure enough, to the obvious amusement of those border guards, Bruce had to crawl under the van with his screwdriver to get us back to freedom - and, eventually, the Hungerford Bridge.

 Wordsworth's Dove Cottage, Lake District 

This trip has given us so many opportunities to ride our bikes in interesting places. From gentle canal-side meanderings and heart-pounding urban sprints in Amsterdam to rugged rail trail rides that have pushed us over hilly terrain in Scotland and the Peak District. Not to mention the high-adrenalin downhill action of mountain bike parks from Inverness to Wales.

Our cosy cottage in the Peak District 

Thoughts of mortality - MY mortality - have been insinuating themselves into my wakeful night times lately. Nothing to do with turning 62, I'm sure, but it's hard to avoid the fact that the decades are running out. In a recent reflective moment, bouncing my way uphill in a van with Tour Leader and a bunch of hearty, young biking blokes, I answered a burning question. Why do I enjoy something I'm so unsuited for, physically at least, and which involves co-ordination, exertion and danger?

It's simply this. Careering downhill on challenging slopes I wouldn't have had the confidence to tackle a year ago, I feel intensely alive. Heartbeatingly. Immortally. Undeniably. That feeling is hard to beat.

Making sense of Amsterdam

I’ve borrowed from the master storyteller before. Once again, he steps in to kickstart this piece: 

“Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out the window, teasing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up…”

—Charles Dickens

 Ideas for a travel blog swirl chaotically for days, waiting for some sense of order to appear. This might be prompted by a chance encounter on the street. Or something I’ve read. Or an opening line may even spontaneously step forward, after which those swirling ideas obediently form an orderly queue and the blog writes itself, more or less.

But not this time. No lightbulb moment. Not yet.

Not the overnight ferry. Rather, the view from our barge home

We're aboard an overnight ferry to England  as I write this (which is probably why the orderly queue metaphor popped up, some sort of stiff-upper-lip antidote to the orderly chaos of Amsterdam street life). Inspiration has failed me so I'm unleashing my inner English teacher upon you, dear reader. An inspired lesson plan for a hot afternoon was to take the class to an interesting setting and ask them to engage with their senses. What can you hear? See? Smell? You get the idea. So here it is, a sensory tour of our recent week  in Amsterdam, where the cyclist is king.

For starters, this city is a visual symphony.  Colours bleed from bridges, from painted doorways, from the flower markets, from the marvellous works in the Van Gogh Museum, and from stylishly dressed locals. Amsterdam is so colourful, in fact, that tourists constantly put their lives in danger. Ooh, look at that view over the canal! I'll just step off the footpath and take a pic… Remember, bikes rule. Trams are next in the pecking order while car drivers know their place. Tourists are easily recognisable as the camera-toting chumps standing in the cycle lane. (Tourist tip #1: Do NOT step off the footpath without first looking left.)

 There's also the visual trickery involved in existing on land that is below sea level. We explored the countryside as well as the city, cycling many kilometres along canal paths and through nature reserves. It was disconcerting, at first, to observe that the fast-flowing body of water on your left was some metres higher than the polders (drained fields) to your right. Dykes, canals, drainage channels, locks and lifting bridges – all are testament to the ingenuity of the ancient engineers who conjured land from water. Schipol airport lies in a hollow four metres below sea level. Just amazing.

No flat whites here!

The nose should be on high alert in Amsterdam. A sort of watery dankness permeated our barge apartment, not surprising when you consider the intricacies of plumbing above and below the waterline.  Good coffee is also a thing in this city. Olfactory heaven right there. But wait. It is really important to know the difference between a café and a . . . coffeeshop. The latter tends to boast a garishly painted frontage but with a gloomy interior. Tourist tip #2: Do NOT ask for a flat white in a coffee shop. If your nose has been paying attention, you will understand why. 

Actually, there is something rather pleasing about wandering the streets of a city where it is okay to smoke weed in public. I confess I found myself sniffing the air appreciatively more than once. It certainly beats the acrid reek of tobacco smoke. In fact, unlike Bill Clinton, I may have inhaled more this week than in my twenties. (Which was only once. Honestly.) If I had wanted to take things further, I could have jumped on a Smoke Boat for a hazy canal tour. Or bought a packet of marijuana cookies, even. 

Found one or two of these

How's that for a neat segue into the next sense, taste? Could Mr Dickens do better? I have to admit that we are not really foodie tourists. Staying in self-contained accommodation means cooking for ourselves, so many of the culinary delights of Amsterdam were wasted on this kiwi couple. But that's not to say we didn't sample the key ingredients, Heineken, cheeses and salamis, and Dutch almond cakes. . .

There's a limit to how far I can take this sensory expedition so let's finish with the sounds of Amsterdam.

The Dutch National Youth Orchestra delighted us with their polished performance in the ornate 19th century Concertgebouw. Earlier in the week, we were entertained by four hugely talented and sartorially sharp clarinettists (the New Amsterdam Clarinet Quartet) in a free open-air concert in the Vondelpark. Mr Heineken was there too. Perfect!

The shoes!

Like many a European metropolis, the sounds  of Amsterdam include sonorous and stately church bells, urgent sirens and insistent tram bells. Add in bicycle bells (to get unthinking tourists out of cycle lanes) and the whoop-whoop heralding the raising of a bridge and there you have it, the soundtrack to the busyness and vibrancy that is Amsterdam.

Bike assembly on the barge

FOOTNOTE: The Dutch sense of self-deprecating humour is alive and kicking. Here's a brilliant YouTube video from the early days of the Trump presidency, America first, the Netherlands second

https://youtu.be/ELD2AwFN9Nc

But wait, there's more!

My number one follower, aka Tour Leader, spends many hours thinking 'big picture' thoughts. When he suggested I might like to include some of his ideas in my blog, I suggested he might like to write his own. Here it is.

Anarchy on Bikes

In Amsterdam there are more cycles than people. A good number of those cycles are on the bike pathways. Bike traffic is different to car traffic. In cities, cars have to follow each other because they take up too much space and there are too many of them on the road. It is a very regimented procession. Cycles are different. There is more freedom to express your individuality. They are travelling at different speeds. There is risk taking that never seems have any consequences. There are family groups, often with the youngsters on the same cycle as a parent. These groups behave very responsibly. Traffic rules exist but they can be broken if it's more sensible to do so. Only cyclists can break the rules. There is anarchy but every one seems to get to their destination safely.

That anarchy can exist only because the dedicated bike paths exist. There must have been bureaucrats in their offices carefully planning separation of bikes from pedestrians and motorised transport. They also decided to lay all the bike paths in red bitumen and even continue those bike paths around roundabouts. Parked cars cannot interfere with bikes. All of this planning and construction of the necessary infrastructure was done by a public body.

Amsterdam has a fascinating history. It was a centre for trade for hundreds of years. The stock exchange was invented there. Market driven economics has been an important part of their history and culture. So has public enterprise. Building dykes and canals and pumping water needed enterprise on a scale that large public entities could achieve. A culture of private enterprise and public endeavour complementing each other is evident. It has also been a very liberal culture. All religions, ethnicities, and gender orientations are accepted. It's illegal to do otherwise. There are more important things to worry about than smoking cannabis or riding your bike through a red light.

Capitalism is based on individualism. The motor car gained its ascendancy because you can go from your own home to wherever. Maybe raw capitalism is showing its flaws in the same way that reliance on the motor car is proving to be problematic. Traffic jams never seem to happen with cycles. Amsterdam moves a lot of people on bikes and trams. A lot of the cyclists are having fun as well. Maybe it's the individualism of cycling without the frustration of traffic.

There are people rediscovering what socialism means. Maybe it isn't a dirty word that can't be taken seriously. Sometimes the best solutions don't come about because the market moved blindly to create them. Sometimes it might involve what people want, bureaucracies and planning. Amsterdam is a great example. They clearly have a love affair with the humble bicycle, they have created a great infrastructure for it, and it works.

- Bruce

A Tale of Two Cities (and a heck of a lot of empty space in between)

My apologies to the dearly departed Mr Dickens for this title but it was just too tempting. I will avoid the temptation though to borrow his opening sentence, which begins, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," and then meanders on for another 73 words.

Because our recent trip to Houston and Austin, Texas, was really, and surprisingly, the best of times. Yes, it was too hot - generally in the mid-30s.  And, yes, when in Texas, there is little choice but to do what the Texans do: worship at the shrine of the almighty motor vehicle.  (There were too many speeding cars on 10-lane motorways, on the wrong side of the road, to make long distance driving enjoyable, but  - cleverly - I had left my driver's licence at home, along with the rest of my wallet, so was assigned the navigator role.)

We flew to Houston in Cuddle Class (I think Air NZ call them sky couches but you can imagine) 10 days ago almost on a whim. Paul Simon was playing there on his final world tour, Homeward Bound. Yes, a world tour that doesn't include Australia and New Zealand, but we forgave the man for that. He has provided the soundtrack to our lives after all - a most remarkable musician, whose performance left me feeling bereft.

Spotted in motorway pit-stop.
I can't wait to write the sequel ...

And we're loyal fans, having seen him in concert in Auckland (with Artie) and in New Plymouth (with Sting) so why not Houston?

The Auckland concert a few years back was also a highlight for the oddest of reasons. Partway through a nostalgic rendition of 'Bridge over Troubled Water', there was an audio-visual blackout. All sound was lost. But within a bar or two, the audience picked up the lyrics and sang lustily along with Paul and Art until those poor AV techies got their act together. Unforgettable.

While in Houston, we did our best to find petrol-free ways of getting around. We rode B-Cycles to visit air-conditioned museums (go on, ask me about Sam Houston, or the NASA space program, or why Astroturf is so named...), though at $3 per 30 minutes the city bike-share scheme was pricey.

We walked on sidewalks damaged by regular flooding and upthrusting tree roots to our local, air-conditioned coffee shop. We rode two buses home from a stellar performance of The Sound of Music, waiting for 20 minutes between rides in a flimsy metal bus shelter while a ferocious thunderstorm played out with full pyrotechnics overhead.

As a local put it, Texans survive the intense heat of  their summer by shuttling from one air-conditioned space to another: home - car - work - shopping mall - home. The homeless don't have that luxury, of course, so make do with park benches wherever they can find shade. I could only wonder, while huddled in that metal box, if these folk had found shelter from the storm in time.

Historic couple stand in front of
 historic Mission Control,  NASA
Space Center, Houston

Urbane Austin, some three hours of crowded expressways and empty horizons from Houston, was a delightful contrast to petrol-head Houston. It brands itself officially as the live music capital of the world, but has also adopted the slogan Keep Austin Weird in response to big corporates such as Oracle and Whole Foods setting up head offices there.

Austin also specialises in hipster cafes and bike commuters. Our apartment building just happened to be next door to the coolest of coffee shops. As frequent visitors (no more than twice a day though) we raised the average age of its clientele by two decades every time we walked in. And, of course, immediately lowered its hipster status to zero. But the bearded and bow-tied young men behind the counter were genuinely welcoming,  not to mention kind when we both, on separate occasions, broke plates and cups. They would have put such clumsiness down to our funny accents and advancing years, I guess.

"Yes we did" - on Houston wall

Texas does history super-sized. There is so much of it, from the early Spanish explorers, missionaries and native Americans, through to horrific battles with Mexico and declarations of independence - all of it recorded with great pride in gigantic air-conditioned edifices.  In Austin, we met a senior couple immaculately dressed in period costume as Mr and Mrs Early Settler. While she role-played a Texan heroine, Susanna Dickinson, to me, Bruce chewed the fat with Mr ES. Now, as you can imagine, Tour Leader was under strict instructions to avoid discussing politics with the locals. So he was surprised to be asked how the rest of the world viewed recent events in the United States. A circumspect response was called for but they eventually found plenty of common ground. Paradoxically, this Texan was a gun-owning patriot (he showed Bruce his licence to carry a concealed weapon) very concerned about the damage being done to his beloved country.

Did I mention we saw dinosaurs? Meet T-Rex...

And that about sums up our experience, brief as it was - paradoxical. We met kind, friendly people, some of whom must have voted for their cartoonish President, gas-guzzling drivers who were unfailingly courteous to cyclists and pedestrians. As Tour Leader keeps reminding me, Trump is not the cause; he is a symptom.

San Antonio Riverwalk

As a postscript, we also spent a night in San Antonio before returning to Houston's George Dubya Bush Airport. If I'd mentioned it earlier, it would mess with the title of the blog of course. We can't be having that. Here, we found a vibrant central city and more history than you could shake a stick at. 'Remember the Alamo!' was the Texan war cry in the final battle for independence from Mexico.

Go on, ask me about the Alamo.

Golden days

I meet Flora at the traffic lights, waiting with other pedestrians to cross the busy intersection. Tour Leader and I  are on our bikes, about to pedal off to another exciting session of Commonwealth Games hockey semi-finals. Flora is on foot, anchoring herself firmly to a lamp post as she waits for the little green man.

Games volunteers, always willing to give a big hand

She clocks my yellow hi-vis vest and offers, "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie?" Given that almost the entire Gold Coast population, those who haven't fled town, are wearing yellow and green this week, it's a natural assumption to make. She's had a bit much to drink, hence her attachment to the lamp post. But I've drunk two glasses of (erggh!) Aussie pinot gris with dinner - perhaps not the best choice before a 20km ride in the dark.

In this passing moment, we connect over our otherness. We shake hands and exchange names. Learning that I'm a New Zealander, Flora is quick to share that she's mixed race, aboriginal with some kiwi in there too. Like Flora, we're outsiders, witnesses to Australia's golden extravaganza that is the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Unlike Flora, we will soon be flying over the ditch to where we do belong.

Dancing security guards

These are, of course, the Friendly Games, not to be compared with the drug-infested winner-takes-all culture of the Olympic Games. Or so we are reminded. A lesson that  gold medallist Sam Gaze had to publicly learn this week too. And, to their credit, organisers of the Games and the accompanying festival events have attempted to embrace indigenous culture. Not everyone is happy about this, of course. It's Queensland after all. Pauline Hansen excelled herself in her, er, considered critique of the opening ceremony. "Disgusting" was her response to the 20 minutes or so of indigenous story-telling in the interminable event beamed to the bits of the world who cared enough to watch. If you open that link, above, you'll also learn that Hanson is not a racist.

Mountain bikers Cooper and Gaze

We can laugh at the likes of Pauline Hanson and her skewed world view. She's a ridiculous woman and a ridiculously easy target. Taika Waitati's recent comments, on the other hand, I find harder to gloss over. This Stuff article provides a short summary, if you've been living under a rock, or on the Gold Coast, lately.

I grew up in a casually racist era. We routinely mangled Maõri place names. In my grandparents' and parents' world, it was perfectly okay to say of a relative, "She married a Maori, you know.  But a good Maori". I've never forgotten that snippet of overheard adult conversation. We've come a long way since then for sure. But the journey is far from over. And the difference is that we now know that sort of casual, thoughtless racism is anything but okay.

Meanwhile, back in the endless summer that is the Gold Coast (forecast to be 32 degrees tomorrow and I packed three jerseys for this trip. Really?), the Aussie gold rush continues. Right now, the Lucky Country has won 72 gold medals, with plenty more to come. The local paper carried an article this week that was crowing, there's no other word for it, over the hapless English athletes who have managed only 40 golds so far. Only. The headline read, Hey Team England, where the bloody hell are you?

We've watched so many Ocker victories that we respond like good Pavlovian pooches now, springing to our feet and mouthing the words as 'Advance Australia Fair' fills the stadium again - and again. But how can we begrudge the Aussies their enthusiasm if their population can roam the streets and shopping malls of the Gold Coast in yellow shirts, accessorised with hats big enough to land a helicopter on and flags worn like Superman capes?

We'll just savour the sweet moments. Beach volleyball as a spectacular spectator sport. (And nothing to do with what plàyers were wearing.) The gold/silver double by our mountain bikers. The stunning gold medal performance of our Black Sticks women. Oh, was that a victory over the Australian team? Where the bloody hell were they?

Bloody great sparrows they have over here

Freewheeling thoughts

It is the greatest irony of my life that I spend so much of my time riding a bike these days. At secondary school, it took me until the 4th form to understand that PE classes and I needed to part ways. It wasn't just the rompers, those hideous sports bloomers for girls, made from yards of material and designed to reveal what should have been hidden. Rather, it was the realisation that I had no co-ordination, no ability to read a game of hockey or netball, and no interest in doing so.

After that epiphany, I took to hanging out behind the stage during PE classes and lunchtimes while my friends practised their instruments. Taita College believed in educational punishments. For my sins, I was given multiple pages of the dictionary and the Bible to copy out.  By the time I reached 7th form, the backlog had reached triple figures. I think winning a few academic prizes at the end of my school career may have helped to wipe out that debt to society. I hope so.

Other active opportunities were declined as well. I remember one weekend refusing to join my father and sister on a tramp into the Tararua ranges because a certain boyfriend had said he would phone me. (He didn't.)

The writing was on the wall, if I may continue the chirographic motif, when said boyfriend morphed from a reluctant part time university student to a fully qualified physical education teacher. At which point I promptly married him. Oh the irony.

Anyway. Forty years later, here we are on another stunning cycle trail, this time the Alps to Ocean ride. At 300-plus km, this is NZ's longest trail ride, encompassing a number of our biggest hydro-electric power schemes along the Waitaki River. We began at Lake Tekapo and will finish in Oamaru tomorrow. All of those scenic kilometres allow plenty of time for thinking. So I've been doing just that about cycling's role in saving small rural communities.

The Otago Rail Trail began it all, of course, and famously a number of local naysayers were against the proposal.  John Key has never pulled my ponytail, but I have to give him credit for proposing the National Cycleway Project in early 2009. Since then, cycle trails have popped up all over the country, and generally in areas that desperately need a boost to their economy.

The tiny settlement of Seddonville on the West Coast still has a pub thanks to the success of the Old Ghost Road, now an internationally renowned ride. The West Coast Wilderness Trail further south has provided the impetus for the refurbishment of Kumara's landmark Theatre Royal hotel. In the remote Pureora Forest, cyclists are flocking to ride the Timber Trail, staying in a newly built luxury lodge at Piripiri (I wrote about this here ).

But good things take time, as the old bugger on the Mainland cheese advert used to remind us. And not everyone is happy with changes to their world. At first, anyway.

We saw this when riding the two-day Twin Coast trail a couple of years ago. Graffiti along the trail suggested that cyclists weren't particularly popular. Yet,  on every trail we've ridden, throughout New Zealand, we've met welcoming locals. Many have taken the opportunity to offer accommodation or food. Others are at times bemused by the helmeted hordes but always willing to offer help, or just pass the time of day.

On the Alps to Ocean trail, the only cafés in town have recently closed in both Duntroon and Otematata, making it a long ride between coffees. But let's hope these establishments can reopen in the future. And why not? This cycling renaissance is driven by time-rich baby boomers, and no doubt helped by the increasing numbers of e-bikes on the road.

This trip reminds me of last year's long distance adventure, following Hadrian's Wall on foot across England (which I wrote about here , gotta keep those reader numbers up). The Wall was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987 and the dedicated pathway became an official national trail in 2003. But the walk itself is delightfully undeveloped. Amenities are limited (don't get me started on toilets), while pubs open at 12 noon so a morning coffee is out of the question.

Things might be slow in New Zealand's rural hinterland but Emperor Hadrian would have had more chance of sending out a minion for a flat white in Featherston than in his own back yard.

Down the Rabbit Hole

H-town, Cowtown, the Tron ... Population 156,000 and rising. However you know it, Hamilton (or HamiltON as it's currently promoted) has had its share of knockers over the years.

Well-meaning city bureaucrats and councillors have not helped its cause. Fountain City. Really? Where? And, most memorably, the unfortunate Hamilton - More than you expect.

I've been there. I've sledged Hamilton, sniggered at its pretentious ways while sipping my flat white down the road in Cambridge (oh, the irony), laughed at its branding issues. But I was wrong.

I was wrong because...Hamilton Gardens.

This world-class attraction at the southern entrance to the city is home to over 20 themed gardens. There are expansive rolling lawns, with paths for strolling,  dog-walking or toddler-triking. There are vast drifts of  camellias and rhododendrons. There is the fragrantly alliterative Rogers Rose Garden.

But it is in the smaller walled gardens that I have been delightfully lost this week. I've felt like Alice plunging into Wonderland while negotiating hidden doors, twisting pathways and regimented plantings. Many of these small spaces, each one carefully curated, are performance venues for the Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival (So worth a visit. Here's the website)

There's the Japanese Garden of Contemplation. The Italian Renaissance Garden. The Chinese Scholars' Garden. Te Parapara Garden. The Sustainable Back Yard. To name just a few. They just make you want to stroll right on in, don't they?

Waikawa Audio (We make you sound better than you are) is on the job at the Festival this week and next, providing sound for dancers, opera singers, actors and comedians. CEO Bruce plans where to run cables and set up amps, hoists speakers and sends his minion off to find left-handed screwdrivers. This minion follows in his wake, loaded with gear and absorbing techie terms. And stopping to take photos, of course.

So, thank you to those foresighted 1960s Hamilton city governors who had the vision to create these gardens out of a rubbish dump. And to today's green-fingered staff who lovingly tend the gardens in their care.

The Waikawa Audio (We hear you even if no one else can) gig at the Gardens Festival really is a family affair. Larry knows his way there. And Bill is a regular too. For the past two years, he has been the official Green Room for the percussionists of the Sunset Symphony orchestra. This year, his role is support vehicle to Waikawa Audio (We're all ears). Happy families.

Plan B

Just after midnight on November 14, 2016, the landscape of North Canterbury changed forever. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake took lives, destroyed homes and businesses and forced the massive rebuild of SH1 and the main trunk rail connection between Christchurch and Picton.

Yarn-bombing: rebuilding
Kaikõura one row
at a time!

Like many others, we were keen to travel the new highway south as far as Kaikõura township, to see for ourselves what engineering feats the NCTIR (North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery) team had achieved.  

Bill handled the trip beautifully. Meanwhile, his people were kept busy responding to the army of stop-go sign wielders who grinned and waved at us all the way down the coastline. One now knows how the Queen must feel when out and about.

Kaikõura itself was bustling with an eclectic mix of independent travellers, bus tourists and construction workers. And nosy parkers like us, of course. The pub where we ate our gourmet burgers asked that patrons leave their hi vis gear and work boots in their vehicles. So we did.


After some tootling around town looking for the best spot for the night, we settled on a park next to the beach at South Bay. Cue sunset pic:

The plan for the following day (Plan A, shall we say?) was to fill in some hours as best we could until Coffee o'Clock then to head off into the hills above the town to visit friends.

There's nothing like a good bike ride to take the mind off things. The roads of South Bay and the new cycle path that ran alongside the highway south of the town provided the necessary diversion until the hunt for the elusive flat white and long black. Regular, single shot. Cheers.

Back on the road, Bill and his caffeinated cargo left the main highway north of Kaikõura after crossing the Hapuku River. We'd been told to expect a 40 minute drive; the word "hairy" may also have been bandied about. Google Earth had already led Bruce to expect the tarseal to last approximately half a minute. And so it came to pass.

But things were going swimmingly. We squeezed past vehicles leaving the DOC camp. We negotiated hairpin bends and massive slips. (No NCTIR crews here to repair earthquake damage.) We crossed fords. And then we didn't.

A ford too far

The final ford was too deep and rocky. It could almost be described as a raging wee torrent, if one were feeling poetical. (At the time, one wasn't.)

 The alternative was a rickety bridge designed for vehicles slimmer than Bill.

Time for Plan B.

Lunch was transferred to a chilly bag, the bikes were downloaded and Bill was left behind, with time on his hands (tyres?) to reflect on the consequences of being overweight. And over-wide.

With some 10km of uphill riding to reach our destination, the wheat quickly sorted itself from the chaff. Bruce powered off into the distance. I did what any self-respecting chaff would do. Phone A Friend. Or, more accurately, message a friend in the hope that intermittent cell coverage would work in my favour.

Five dusty kilometres later, our rescue vehicle met us. Mike and Sue, old friends from the North Island, were staying with their son and his family in this remote yet stunningly beautiful spot. To help with the logistics of bikes + babies in the car, Bruce once again powered off into the distance (No, he's not on an e-bike. Yes, he likes going uphill. Yes, we're possibly mismatched but it's taken me 40 years to realise this), leaving me and my bike to hitch a ride to the homestead at road's end.

What could possibly go wrong?

The gearbox, that's what. Situation status report follows: Stationary car takes up most of the narrow road.  Gearbox refuses to leave Park. No phone reception. Two hungry babies on board. It's an hour to the nearest mechanic.

Kiwi kindness and ingenuity saved the day. The passing stranger delivering a trailer load of fenceposts managed to turn back (more than a 3-point turn needed!) and deliver a message to someone who got a message to... well, you can imagine how it unfolded. While we mentally totted up the huge cost of having the dead gearbox replaced, the car's owner (and babies' daddy) arrived and tinkered underneath the car.

We were on our way in minutes.

I began this blog with the vague idea of saying something about the impact of the November 2016 earthquake on more than just the high-profile coastal corridor. And that's certainly the case. The slopes surrounding us were scarred by slips; DOC huts had been swept away; high in the hills above us, a tourism venture was in ruins. The condemned hunting lodge, at the end of a now impassable access road, used to greet its guests at the helicopter pad.

But wait, there's more. This wee jaunt took us to a part of New Zealand that seemed a million miles away from the reconstructed state highway. The sheer scale of high country farming is enough to inspire awe in this townie. The Seaward Kaikõura mountains, clothed in mist that day, towered over the farm, their majesty felt if not seen. Faraway ridge lines marked its boundaries.

We are very fortunate to be able to travel the byways as well as the main highways. It was such a treat to experience this spectacular landscape - just on the other side of the ford too far.