by Josie Dew
From the Rail Trail I started weaving my way north before cycling the road from Kurow (‘argumentative queuing system’) to Omarama (‘Bananarama’s mother’) twice. As far as roads are concerned, New Zealand is still in its infancy. Compared with home, where roads have been built for thousands of years resulting in an intricate and historical web of highways and byways that criss-cross the country in a magnificent entangled network (enough to satisfy a dedicated cyclist for several lifetimes), New Zealand only started getting a grip on its road-building a mere 150 years ago. In the South Island there’s a road down the west coast, a road down the east coast with a momentary strip in the middle and the odd squiggle across from side to side. And that’s more or less it, which means if you spend any time on the move, you’re bound to travel along the same road more than a few times.
I cycled the Kurow to Omarama road twice, not because I was lacking in choice but because, despite hitting an afternoon headwind that blew up the valley as regular as clockwork known locally as the Waitaki Doctor, it was such an enjoyable ride I wanted to elongate the pleasure and so rode it all over again in the opposite direction. This little-used road, which follows the Waitaki Valley, skirts Lake Benmore (the largest artificial lake in the country, holding a greater volume of water than the entire Wellington Harbour) and Mount Horrible (very nice looking, actually). There are lakes and mountains everywhere, because no sooner have you shot through Sailors Cutting and passed Pass Peak than you find yourself riding beside the banks of Lake Aviemore and Lake Waitaki – which in 1938 was the scene of the last hydroelectric dam in New Zealand to be built using labour-intensive picks and shovels. Autumn proved perfect timing to be cycling this road – the deciduous trees were flaming gold.
In Kurow I stopped at the tourist office, which was shut. But an unusual notice on the door advertised:
‘THE SPIDERMAN – Glen Wylie … the guy who is good at killing spiders. You will be truly amazed at the results that Spiderman can come up with! (And it doesn’t cost much either!) RING TODAY! 0800 SPIDEY.’
I don’t think I will be ringing this spider-killing Spiderman. Spiders in my tent are good news. They eat the sandflies that I feed them.
I cycled back up the street to the motorcamp, passing a house with a sign attached to the front gate warning: ‘FORGET THE DOG – BEWARE OF THE OWNER’. The motorcamp was strategically located near the confluence of the Waitaki and Hakataramea Rivers, both renowned for their trout and salmon fishing. The only caravans on the site now were rows of permanent ones, vacated for the winter, but obviously belonging to fishing sorts judging from the fishy-flavoured stickers attached to their rears. Stickers saying things like: GONE FISHIN’ AGAIN and WORK IS FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW HOW TO FISH. Another one was more an advertisement:
WANTED: GOOD WOMAN. MUST BE ABLE TO COOK, CLEAN, SEW, DIG WORMS AND CLEAN FISH. MUST HAVE BOAT AND MOTOR.
PLEASE SEND PHOTO OF BOAT AND MOTOR.
The night I camped at Kurow was cold and wet. The only other person I saw at the motorcamp was Ian McKie, an elderly Scotsman with a fine shock of white wavy hair. He invited me into his caravan to warm up beside his electric bar heater. Ian had had his caravan here since ’seventy-five. He was proud of it too, not least because it fitted a double bed in it whereby you could still have room to walk round both sides of the bed. ‘Most caravans have the bed up against the wall,’ explained Ian. ‘But here, look, I can walk up and doon both sides of the bed!’
Ian still sounded as Scottish as if he had stepped straight from the moors, though he’d been in New Zealand since 1958. He lived in Dunedin. ‘Before I arrived in New Zealand I’d heard Dunedin was the Edinburgh of the South. I’d also heard that Auckland can get humid in summer and that Dunedin was said to be more like the weather in Scotland – cold and damp – so I thought tha’ would suit me fine!’
Ian rose from his chair and shuffled down one side of the bed before turning round and shuffling down the other side – as if to demonstrate that, yes, both sides of the bed were indeed very accessible. Then he eased himself back down into his chair and ran a creased hand through his wavy hair.
‘I was in the Navy,’ he said, ‘when I got chatting to some Kiwi fellas on the ship. That’s when I decided to come to New Zealand on an immigration programme where if you kept the same job for two years, they would pay for your passage.’
Ian was originally from Dumfries, but he hadn’t been back there since the day he left. ‘When the Common Market started up, we suddenly had all these juggernauts rumbling through the toon. And in order for them to do that, they had to tear down half of Dumfries. That’s why I never wanted to go back – I want to remember Dumfries how it always was.’
12
Timaru, South Canterbury, 20 April
Yesterday, cycling along the north bank of the Waitaki River, I was held up by first a sheep-jam and then a cowblock. I had never seen such an amassed wall of cattle. Approaching from the rear, all I could see of the road for a good half a mile ahead was a scene of total bovine gridlock. Several excitable dogs busied themselves acting all lordly, slinking, eyeing, steering and snapping at the hooves, especially when a clump of the herd would stop to observe me, moonily chomping and staring. A young girl on a quad bike was assisting the dogs by bringing up the rear. She wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘I CAN’T SO I WON’T’. But despite that, she seemed to be doing very well. She told me there were 687 cows in front of me and to cycle straight through them. ‘They’ll make way for you!’ she called. And they did, albeit a bit grudgingly. As I slowly carved a path among the sea of clumping rumps, it felt like sinking into a horizontal quicksand of cows – small air pockets would open up and then just as suddenly close up tight all around. I’m not sure if it is possible to drown among a surfeit of cattle, but I feel I came quite close.
After riding by fields with huge wheeled irrigation booms like horizontal pylons, I headed over Elephant Hill and through oak woods and eucalyptus groves and rocky outcrops until the sun disappeared and a grubby washcloth mist uncurled across the rolling pastures. Slowly another day was drawn across the sky like a grey slate. I plunged down through an unexpected gorge and then I was upon the small country town of Waimate where a sign warns you to watch out for the wallabies. Instead of wallabies all I saw was a Chinese takeaway called Ping Ying and an elderly woman on a mobility scooter weaving about the road doing a grand job at trying to get run over by a logging truck.
There’s been quite a lot in the news of late about mobility scooters. One woman called simply ‘Mary’ was reported in The Press as wanting to thank those who came to her aid on 10 April. A wind gust (don’t tell me it was that devilish Waitaki Doctor) caught her mobility scooter and caused a minor accident. The Press said that, ‘apart from bruising and minor cuts, Mary is fine and back on her scooter.’
What a relief.
Poor Mary couldn’t help her wind gust, but other mobility scooter users have been acting more and more irresponsibly. In fact the situation is so bad that there’s to be something called a ‘scooter safety forum’ in Nelson next month. ‘Scooter users have been seen riding on the road instead of the footpath and barrelling along supermarket aisles, knocking things off the shelves,’ said Margaret Parfitt, the Nelson City road safety co-ordinator.
Mount Somers, South Canterbury, 22 April
For a brief few unpleasant kilometres (about fifty in all), I had to join SH1 – the main state highway that bulldozes its way down the east coast. The stretch between Christchurch and Dunedin was particularly busy and full of articulated lorries and double-trailer trucks thundering along at full throttle. Cycling along the edge of the straight, flat road in a frisky side wind as two trucks (particularly logging trucks) meet in opposing directions is always a reliably invigorating experience. Especially that bit where you hit an explosive whoomph of displaced air.
Added to the trucks was the steady stream of buses and motorhomes. I noticed, in a generally generalised manner, that the private to
ur buses were mostly full of parties of Japanese or Americans – most of whom looked very asleep. Younger students were the ones filling the seats of the organised backpacker-style tour buses like the Flying Kiwi, the pea-green Kiwi Experience and the black Magic Bus. Rented motorhomes and campervans were the domain of Europeans, while the impoverished long-term travellers went for buying beaten-up campercars and much-used vans with the makeshift double bed mattress crammed in the back. Retired Kiwis continued to travel the country in their personally named motor caravans (EAZEMOTION, PURR FECT, B’ AWAY AWHILE, LET’S GO HOMEY, LUV-INN, DOOFA US, DUN-WORKIN’, CRUIZIN’, MAKIN TRAX, NOSE N AROUND, BIG-ENUFF, BED-FOR(D) US, SCAMPA CAMPA, SNOOZA DOOZA, AMPLE KARMA, TAR TREKA, TOULOOSE MOOSE, CRUZIN’ BYE, CRUISE ‘N’ SNOOZE, 4 LAZ ‘N’ ABOUT; CUM ‘N’ GO, NO HANKY PANKY, HANK’S TANK, SHAG’N AROUND, BEDDY BUS, JUS PURRFIC, SWEET AZZ, BUG ER WORKIN’, WELL BUGGA ME DAZE, CORK FORK & PILLOW, THE OLD FARTS, PEACED TOGETHER and CEE-YA). Then there were the Kiwis of an affluent nature who liked to own a no-expense-spared tour bus with full flip-up satellite dishes, home-from-home kitchens and bathrooms, small gardens and golf courses. Bussing Bill, an elderly widower I’d met in Wanaka, had just bought himself a new Civilia bus, which he told me cost him $75,000. ‘The woodwork alone of the kitchen units and cupboards cost me $45,000,’ said Bill. And Bill’s bus was quite a small bus compared with some of the monsters on the road.
Once through busy Timaru with its surplus of eateries with names like The Hairy Lemon, The Loaded Hog, The Red Rocket and Bold as Brasserie, I turned off at Washdyke for Pleasant Point. And before I knew it I was back in Kevin … I mean Geraldine. Far better to be back in a place I’d already been, than end up as road kill on SH1.
In the small behind-store car park of the local Supervalue supermarket, I had an interesting experience. Apart from three slope-shouldered adolescents sitting on an overlooking wall cowled like monks in their hoodies, there was no one else around. Then a young mum pushing a small boy in a trolley came out of the supermarket’s rear door. She looked at me and said, ‘You’re not that girl who writes cycling books, are you?’
I was just about to deny all responsibility for past misdemeanours when she suddenly asked, ‘Can I give you a hug?’ But it was more a statement than a question because, still semi-attached to her trolley, she leant over to give me a hug. So there we were, two complete strangers, interlocked in a hug in the Supervalue car park, watched over by three perplexed boys in hoods. Then it was all over as quickly as it had begun and I walked into Supervalue to do my shopping.
When I returned to my bike I found a brown paper bag attached on a pannier. Written on the bag was a note. ‘Josie,’ it said, ‘at the risk of sounding mad please come and stay if you come back to Geraldine. We are at— Thanks for the inspiration. Julie Blair.’
Made my return visit to Kevin all worth while.
Hawkeswood Pass, Canterbury, 30 April
Another ‘been there, done that’ place I stopped at was Mount Somers. When the very Kiwi-sounding woman owner of the motorcamp saw me she said, ‘What are you doing back here again?’ I told her I was doing a U-turn to meet Gary. When she heard that I wanted a place to put my tent she said, ‘You don’t want to be in a tint! You should git a kibin – it’s going to be tin below zero tonight.’
But I held my ground, explaining that I wanted to see how long I could hold out in my tent before I gave in to warm, dry comforts.
‘I bit you’re going to git a kibin when you meet your boyfriend!’ said Mrs Motorcamp with a nod and a wink.
Saucy devil.
Back past Pudding Hill I went. Then came Mount Hutt and the big rip of a dip down into Rakaia Gorge. Once past Zigzag Road, Windwhistle whipped by together with a bright yellow hillside covered with the rich musty smell of gorse. And then I was in Coalgate, Sheffield, Oxford, Omihi (‘to greet oneself’) and Greta Valley, a blip of a community with a ‘Junk and Funk’ store and a pub-cum-restaurant offering motorists a free ‘Driver Reviver’ cup of coffee.
I’m now camping in the freezing mist at the top of Hawkeswood Pass. I think I’m on a sort of farm, possibly called The Staging Post, but it’s a bit hard to see anything because of the mist. I can just hear the lowing, bleating and barking of cattle, sheep and deer all around. There are wooden cabins here with big gaps in the doors, but the elderly woman owner who is occasionally sighted scuttling in and out of various doors has let me camp. The only other person here is Ken, a possum hunter from the West Coast working for Scope Hunting Ltd. He’s putting poison down and setting traps all over the area ‘to kill the little bastards!’ Seems he’s been over this way a lot. Knows the old woman well. She calls him Young Man. ‘Evening Young Man,’ she called as she bustled through the camp kitchen at one point. Over the kitchen sink is a black and white photograph of a woman reclining in a chair. The picture bears the words ‘How beautiful it is to do nothing and then to rest afterwards!’
Ken saw me looking at this picture and, nodding his head in the direction of Mrs Staging Post, said, ‘I wouldn’t say those are the words to describe her!’ He told me that although she was married, there was never any sign of the husband. ‘She’s the one who runs the place. The night before last I was woken up by a loud bang. When I went outside, I found her standing in the dark with a shotgun. She told me she’d just shot a possum in a tree. She hates the bastards too!’
A little later on, after Ken had retired for the night to polish his traps, Mrs Staging Post did a very rare thing and slumped in a chair for a moment or two. ‘When I married my husband,’ she told me, ‘he said to me, “I just want to let you know I’m not going to be one of those husbands who keeps telling you I love you!” We’ve always done our own thing, but every Wednesday is our time together and we always go out for the day.’
Kaikoura (again), 1 May
I’ve just realised that I’ve now cycled 3,000 miles and I haven’t had a puncture. Yet. It’s also just occurred to me that I haven’t seen another loaded cyclist for weeks. Must have all gone home as the weather, if not cold, is wet. Or both. There again, maybe they’ve got more sensible things to be doing than cycling around South Island in the winter.
Outside the Four Square in town I met a couple called Derek and Jenny who told me that they had once seen me waffling on about bicycles at a travel show in Bristol. They had both left their jobs a while back in an insurance company where they worked, to travel from Rome to Australia. They’d recently cycled from Adelaide to Sydney and preferred Australia to New Zealand. ‘It’s a much whackier place,’ said Derek. ‘New Zealand is too much like the UK – a similar culture with similar people.’ They were currently bikeless, driving around just the South Island in a hire car before heading back to Oz in a week or two. Tonight they were treating themselves to a motel. ‘We’ve just bought ourselves some comfort food,’ said Derek, hoisting up the Four Square carrier bag in his hand. ‘Fishfingers, baked beans and mashed potatoes!’
There’s still much talk about the shearing of Shrek doing the rounds, not least because it’s been revealed that Shrek’s televised shearing attracted some of the highest viewing figures ever recorded. Tonight on Radio Pacific (station motto: ‘Free speech is only a phone call away!’) a man said how Kiwis liked to think of themselves as sophisticated these days. ‘Remember it wasn’t so long ago that towns only consisted of a Four Square and a milk bar – now we have street-cred cafes offering fifty different types of coffee, yet we still tune in to watch a sheep being shorn!’
13
Blenheim, Marlborough, 6 May
I’ve just cycled up the coast from Kaikoura in hammering rain and hurtling winds gusting at 120 km/h. The headwind was so strong that no matter how much effort I put into it, I couldn’t cycle much more than 4 mph. Dispiriting stuff, yet strangely exciting wondering if I was actually going to survive the ordeal.
I met a woman in Blenheim today who was driving a friend’s campervan down from Auckland to Christchurch. She left Auckland the day before
yesterday. She was not enjoying it as she found the van far too cramped for comfort, despite the fact that the van had big bunks, a table, squashy seats, a kitchen and room to stand up. ‘It’s so cramped,’ she said, gesticulating through the open sliding door of the van into what looks to me like a capacious expanse to manoeuvre, ‘that I never make a meal in there. Not even breakfast. I go to Macdonalds instead. I look at motels and think luxury!’
Funny that, because I look at campervans and think luxury!
Richmond, Marlborough, 10 May
From Blenheim I had a choice of cycling the direct way back to Picton (about 30 km) or the non-direct way via the Nelson Lakes (about 350 km). I went the non-direct route which, for the first day at least, involved cycling slowly upwards through the mountain-edged wilderness of the Wairau Valley. Not for the first time, a headwind was blowing like blazes. When I left Blenheim in the morning, the wind had actually felt tinged with warmth, but by the time I approached the alpine meadows of St Arnaud, the wind, blasting in a wintry curve down the funnel of the valley, was knobblingly cold. That night, camping beside the splendours of the glacier-formed lake of Rotoiti, the thick blanket of frost that settled on my tent looked as heavy as snow. The only vehicles to pass me all day were three double-trailer stock trucks and the odd farmer’s pick-up, all with wire-thin working dogs barking mindlessly on the tray behind the cab.