A little R & R: Hanmer to Geraldine

We were feeling a little battered by the time the bike screeched to a halt at the bottom of Jacks Pass in Hanmer Springs on Monday afternoon. A shower, followed by dinner at the local Irish pub was just the tonic to revive the shattered bodies. By Tuesday morning we were ready to roll along the Hurunui Heartland ride from Hanmer to Rangiora.

First job was to bike up to the Post Shop and send the tent, camping gear and panniers home – an instant reduction in my load of 7kg – woohoo!!

The weather looked promising for our crossing of Hurunui & Canterbury. Lots of weather fronts coming in from the South West but the main divide was keeping the rain away – just giving our luxurious locks a darn good air drying.

The only slight hiccup on the first section was Howard hitting a pothole while barrelling down a hill. Big red, his carrier bag, took flight, passing him and beating him to the bottom. After suitable adjustments to his luggage arrangements we raced on downhill to Culverden where we found our first and most excellent cafe of the ride and celebrated by having two morning teas.

After a long but satisfyingly flat ride, we reached Waikari where the BnB we had booked turned out to be luxurious and a far cry from our top n tail tent at Molesworth.

Suitably rested, we headed off for what we expected to be a repeat of the previous day’s ‘easy peasy’ ride. However, the gravel roads returned, similar to the muck we had to deal with on day one. Very dusty and we struck a few trucks on the narrow roads so got a good coating of the local top soil on us. We finally arrived at Amberley and enjoyed good food although keeping it on the plate in the blustery norwester was a challenge. The route out of Amberley required a lot of faith as we headed down a ‘no exit’ road then followed a local bike path onto a river bed and followed that until we spotted a road leading away from the other bank. We crossed the river, and then biked into the building gale.

We battled the wind all the way to Rangiora and were happy to find a pub a short walk from our overnight accommodation.

Howard likes to read up on anything local at each stop and discovered that a local bakery was ‘World Famous’ for its Christmas Stollen. This sounded pretty interesting even though neither of us had a clue what Stollen was.

Our next two days were designated as rest days where we would not exceed 70km per day so the next morning our first priority was to search for the Christmas Stollen. We found the bakery and decided to have an early morning tea as well. Howard spotted the stollen and had a large one in his hand. It weighted a ‘ton’, I suggested that the smaller option was more bike friendly and we purchased it along with a few other items of sustenance. Howard declared that he had no room on his battery powered bike so I had to accommodate the weighty Stollen on my fusion powered (any bio- degradable food and beverage are used as fuel) c-bike.

As we headed out of Rangiora there was a definite crispness in the air and the reason was revealed as the cloud cover lifted to reveal snow covered mountains to our West.

We had a farm stay near Oxford. Farm stay means that the roosters wake you at 5am. We could put up with the roosters as it was a very comfortable stay and the bonus was a washing machine and dryer. Very important appliances when you are engaging in active transport modes.

In the morning the hostess and her son came over to inspect Howard’s e-bike. The lad was a budding engineer and had built his own e-cart for which he had won an award. I tried to bamboozle his with tech talk about my manual bike but it was too boring, Howard and his machine were it. Clever lad who will do well in our emerging e-world.

Tonight we are in Geraldine after two flat rides. We are ready for the hills again as we head back up into the mountains. The only gloomy cloud on the horizon is a cold snap that is due to pass through tonight. We may have to acquire chains for our tyres if summer does not make an appearance in the next couple of days.