October 26th, 2008 | categorizilation: all categories,New Zealand
Another reluctant farewell today, as I rode off from Bruce and Melanie’s into a cold day with occassional showers and lots and lots of uphills, gravel roads, and no traffic.
I have to give a big thanks to Bruce for discussing with me possible routes south. The beauty of travelling by bike, is that you are free to dream as big as you like. My eyes are drawn to the most minor, out of the way roads as possible. In New Zealand, I find myself eyeing up the big patches of map with no roads at all. As I gazed at the map at Bruce’s my eyes were drawn to the dead-end roads leading into Whanganui National Park.
I’m not sure of exactly how I ended up with the final route, but from here, the plan is to head south to Taumarunui, get some tractor tyre tubes, haul them to the Bridge To Nowhere in the guts of the National Park across mountain bike tracks, pump them up, float 30km down the river to the next road, and then bike out. On paper, the trip looks fairly straight forward. I look forward to putting the plan into action!
Going by road, it would take a few days. Going this route, it will take about a week.
I arrived in Taumarunui at about 9pm, just after dark. I snuck into the Taumarunui Golf Course, and camped under a tree.
