So I've been meaning to post some photos for a while, and this evening I finally got round to selecting and resizing a few images.
First off, a shot of downtown Wellington, my adopted home.
Recently my wife, a good friend from Oregon who was visiting and myself took a trip to the south island and rode the Queen Charlotte track, which is supposedly the longest continuous singletrack in NZ. It's a great fun ride with some technical sections and a lot of nice flowy track. We took it pretty easy, doing 25km a day for a couple of days. There's a total elevation gain of about 2Km, a bunch of which is on day 2.
So, first we arrived in Picton, after a 3 hour ferry journey from the North Island.
The next morning, us all on the water taxi to the trail head: (Andy, Rachel and myself (L -> R)
The water taxi takes all your luggage on to whichever resort you are staying at, so you are unburdened for the ride. Awesome. Anyway, you just get dumped on a jetty, we choose the furthest one out so we could get a long ride in.
The view from the top of the first climb:
Me crossing a bridge at speed:
A particularly swingy swinging bridge I cleared the first time I just rode it, but could not ride cleanly afterwards. Every pedal stroke rocks the bridge and your bars sway inches from the chickenwire edges. The easiest way to cross is at speed, but on the second go I caught my bar in the wire and nearly flipped over the edge - this is a few seconds before that:
At the end of the day we stayed at a really nice resort which had a superb restaurant. We all ate and drank a little too much. It was great food though, and we watched dolphins playing in the bay from our window:
On day two it rained first thing and we rode up through the cloud. Just as it started to clear we reached the top.
Rach and I coasting on an easy section:
Rach at the bottom of a really long DH section which was our reward for a very long climb! The descent was great, it had rocky bits, smooth flowy bits, bridges, great views and natural jumps. We all had pumped arms and hot brakes.
Me on another DH section through some bush:
At the end of the second day we ended up at a great little resort, which is famous for having hundreds of isolated hammocks dotted around. It was super relaxing.
There are also loads of tree carvings around, ranging from parrots to heads and faces, and this one, a cool lizard:
After that we went swimming with dolphins. No photos in the water I'm afraid, but afterwards the dolphins love to ride the bow-wave from the boat:
End of holiday photos now, here are some other random images - First, Rach and I drunk at the Martinborough Wine festival. That is a good time!
On the way through town to some street riding in downtown Wellington:
FUH2:
Andy has some real quick photo reflexes! Champagne at my place.
Andy and I drinking downtown. Andy was sampling the local brew house wares. Mike D, if you see this, this is the Macs brewery (the rival to Monteiths) and they also have a very similar black beer you can see on Andy's sampler.
That's all for now. Hope you liked them!
First off, a shot of downtown Wellington, my adopted home.
Recently my wife, a good friend from Oregon who was visiting and myself took a trip to the south island and rode the Queen Charlotte track, which is supposedly the longest continuous singletrack in NZ. It's a great fun ride with some technical sections and a lot of nice flowy track. We took it pretty easy, doing 25km a day for a couple of days. There's a total elevation gain of about 2Km, a bunch of which is on day 2.
So, first we arrived in Picton, after a 3 hour ferry journey from the North Island.
The next morning, us all on the water taxi to the trail head: (Andy, Rachel and myself (L -> R)
The water taxi takes all your luggage on to whichever resort you are staying at, so you are unburdened for the ride. Awesome. Anyway, you just get dumped on a jetty, we choose the furthest one out so we could get a long ride in.
The view from the top of the first climb:
Me crossing a bridge at speed:
A particularly swingy swinging bridge I cleared the first time I just rode it, but could not ride cleanly afterwards. Every pedal stroke rocks the bridge and your bars sway inches from the chickenwire edges. The easiest way to cross is at speed, but on the second go I caught my bar in the wire and nearly flipped over the edge - this is a few seconds before that:
At the end of the day we stayed at a really nice resort which had a superb restaurant. We all ate and drank a little too much. It was great food though, and we watched dolphins playing in the bay from our window:
On day two it rained first thing and we rode up through the cloud. Just as it started to clear we reached the top.
Rach and I coasting on an easy section:
Rach at the bottom of a really long DH section which was our reward for a very long climb! The descent was great, it had rocky bits, smooth flowy bits, bridges, great views and natural jumps. We all had pumped arms and hot brakes.
Me on another DH section through some bush:
At the end of the second day we ended up at a great little resort, which is famous for having hundreds of isolated hammocks dotted around. It was super relaxing.
There are also loads of tree carvings around, ranging from parrots to heads and faces, and this one, a cool lizard:
After that we went swimming with dolphins. No photos in the water I'm afraid, but afterwards the dolphins love to ride the bow-wave from the boat:
End of holiday photos now, here are some other random images - First, Rach and I drunk at the Martinborough Wine festival. That is a good time!
On the way through town to some street riding in downtown Wellington:
FUH2:
Andy has some real quick photo reflexes! Champagne at my place.
Andy and I drinking downtown. Andy was sampling the local brew house wares. Mike D, if you see this, this is the Macs brewery (the rival to Monteiths) and they also have a very similar black beer you can see on Andy's sampler.
That's all for now. Hope you liked them!
..... bout of homesickness