Author: neil
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Awatere Valley (Camden), NZ to Awatere Valley (Molesworth), NZ
The alarm went off at 6am, and I was glad to see the radar showed the rain had largely moved on, even though last night’s forecast had a chance of it lingering a couple more hours. That meant we could get moving straight away, and after using the kitchen to get our bagel-and-bacon breakfast together,…
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Seddon, NZ to Awatere Valley, NZ
We were both woken at 2:45am by the first thing larger than a bird that we’ve heard outside our tent in New Zealand, rustling in the dried leaves. When we sat up, it stopped, never to be heard again. Did it simply freeze in place for the rest of the night? Who knows! But at…
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Blenheim, NZ to Seddon, NZ
We’re heading off on a real “bikepacking” adventure, of the sort we’ve rarely (if ever!) done. The Molesworth Muster Trail is a 125-mile mostly-gravel route from Blenheim to Hanmer Springs, through the epic dry valleys of the Awatere and Acheron rivers and up over the high passes that divide them. I had originally set aside…
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Wellington, NZ to Blenheim, NZ
3:45am, the alarm goes off and we are up and moving. 4:45am, the motorized sliding door in the lobby of the apartment block opens on its strange delay, and we roll our loaded bikes out into pre-dawn Wellington. A worker inside the softly-glowing corner coffee shop, prepping for the morning, reminds us that we have…
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Wellington, NZ
Christmas to the New Year The day after Christmas, we took a walk to nearby Mount Victoria. There are steep hills all around Wellington, which keep the city compact from both a population-density perspective, and from a distance-to-nature perspective. It’s an easy walk from even the heart-of-downtown where we’re staying, to forest land so awe-inspiring…