45.5 mi / 11.0 mph / 1085 ft. climbing
Home: Waihola Holiday Park

The small town of Kaka Point sits right on the ocean, but yesterday we were only granted a mile of coast riding between our exit from the hills and our turn up to the campground. This morning as we continued north, we were granted an additional mile, but that was it, as the road turned inland once again. At least it was a really nice mile!

The Clutha River comes from Lake Wanaka (whose shore we stayed on 20 days ago) and empties here, but the first crossing is 10 miles inland at Balclutha. We headed across the flat floodplain, so unusually flat (for New Zealand) that we could see a bike-touring couple ahead of us nearly the entire way into Balclutha.

Balclutha marks the end of the Catlins, but also the first town big enough for a full-size supermarket since Invercargill. We stocked up, crossed the bridge, and immediately turned down the river road on the east side toward Kaitangata. The other option was to go more directly to Waihola on busy SH1, and at least early on, adding distance for quiet riding felt like the right trade to make.

We didn’t go all the way to Kaitangata, but cut down a little-traveled gravel road (which turned out to be a beautiful option) to connect to an even more-empty paved road swinging us back towards SH1.

Despite being out of the Catlins, we still found ourselves in gorgeous hilly farm country, where we faced a rare New Zealand example of “rollers”, though our downhill momentum generally only got us 60% back up the next hill.

Our initial SH1-bypass was preplanned, but when that came to an end, Rett seemed to be enjoying the peace more than she was hating the extra effort, so I did some quick routing research and decided on a new bypass. It turned through a grid of farm roads south of SH1, some gravel, some paved, and returned to the highway just before the town of Milton, where a honk and middle finger from a passing pickup truck before we even turned onto the highway, and then another angry honk-for-no-reason two minutes later, served as shocking proof that staying off the highway had been the right decision.

So once we got through Milton, we got onto the new segment of the Clutha Gold Trail, which initially travelled right next to the highway. But then it wound inland, even going directly backwards for a section, with a lot of unnecessary curves, annoying hills (continually rising above and falling below the nicely-graded railroad tracks it paralleled for a section), and constantly-changing surface types, half of which were just bad. So not at all a good trail, but by that point we had moved away from the highway so we just stuck with it.

As we neared Lake Waihola, the trail changed to a cinder-like surface, probably the sixth different type in four miles. But before I could even vocalize my thought (“ok trail builders, you win first place for the most surface types on one trail, you can stop now!”), we were suddenly on the seventh surface, a wooden boardwalk twisting through marshland. Insanity! It wasn’t too bad for riding on right now, but in 10 years when the boards are cupped and warped, it’s gonna suck to ride over.

At the Waihola Holiday Park, the guy charged us only NZ$30 (despite having booked online for $34), maybe because he told us to just find a spot in one of the central areas to set up in, rather than giving us a specific site? That just means I could find a place with tree-shade, and the multiple kitchens and showers were quite nice, so another great small-town deal.