22 Mar - 4 April Cape Reinga to Christchurch

The problem with being busy doing really great things is this blog gets a bit behind, then it becomes harder to write because I forget most of the little details! It’s been a common problem in New Zealand and continues to be that way!

So picking up from Auckland, somewhat shamefully, over a month ago I left to head up to the northernmost point of the North Island, Cape Reinga. The weather still hadn’t calmed down and the riding was cold and not as enjoyable as it should have been through another lovely part of the country, so a few days stay in Whangarei, the last decent sized town on the way north was called for.

Letting the weather pass, which it does pleasingly quickly here, on the 26^th I set off to Ahipara, a little beach village with a YHA hostel, and the perfect departure point to the long ride alongside 90 mile beach to the north point. On the way across two awesome things happened. Firstly, I passed along the first toll road in New Zealand, which happily is run automatically by cameras registering your number plate, then you go onto their internet site and pay the toll electronically. Fortunately number plates here only have six digits, and mine is seven long which boggles their computer’s mind and lets me travel toll free! It works, I called to ask about it, bonus!

Secondly, as people all say the good motorbikin’ is on the South Island, I was surprised to find the most enjoyable and downright fun road you could imagine passing over a small mountain in the middle of nowhere. Not particularly steep, but very twisty, the road engineers decided to elaborately bank a series of several hundred corners that gives you the sensation of being on a rollercoaster dipping and rising around bends for about 50kms. It’s awesome and I actually felt motion sickness at the end of it. It was even worse an hour later after I’d turned round and rode back and forth along it again just to check it was as good as it seemed the first time round.

The awesome banked road

Twisting and turning on the road north

The following day with perfect weather and bike running like a dream, I set off up to Cape Reinga. As with many parts of New Zealand, there’s only one road there and it’s the same road back. That said, apparently parts of the beach are used a highway which you can ride/drive up when the tides out. Sadly at that time, it would have meant leaving so early in the morning it wouldn’t have been worth it, so I stuck to the road which was more than perfectly pleasant.

The road to Cape Reinga

Nice scenery along the coast

Riding down a track to the dunes

Being New Zealand, they do dune surfing!

following the beach north

Almost there, above a bay looking south

Cape Reinga in comparison to Bluff down south is a delight to ride to, a long narrow spit of land stretches through green fields with huge yellow sand dunes poking up along the west coast making an odd looking scenery of rolling green hills with the odd yellow one thrown in perfectly in place. The north point is marked by a small lighthouse and the ubiquitous yellow sign pointing to various places. Notably busier than Bluff, people mill around asking each other to take photos and read all about the Maori history of the area which is known as the  place where souls travel to after the person dies.

The path to Cape Reinga lighthouse

The very north point of new Zealand

The yellow sign

Cape Reinga was another little milestone of my time in New Zealand and was soon to give way to the next and final one, my friends Allen and Kate visiting from England for a few weeks. This meant a long ride down to Christchurch that was best done in a few long days with some time off to relax on arrival. I picked a spot in New Brighton on the coast called strangely the Purple Der, a purple painted home in an area badly damaged by the earthquakes but was itself fine. The motel as such was someone’s home to which they’d added three guest rooms in an annex off one side which were both cheap and incredibly comfortable.

Catching a ferry on way south

Crossing a river on the North Island

It was a delight to stay somewhere that was within my budget but was basically my own small apartment with private bathroom, kitchen and a huge TV. The long beach at Brighton was just a few minutes away with a little town centre and library, it was the perfect place to relax for a few days before my final big ride back up to Auckland from where my bike will head home by ferry and a few days later I’ll be overtaking it on a plane.

13-21 March: Christchurch to Auckland

I was heading back to the North Island to get my bike serviced in Auckland and take a chance to ride the often recommended Forgotten World Highway and head up Cape Reinga at the top of the island, all things I’d missed in the rush to get south while the weather was good. 

 Look in any good driver’s atlas or list of best roads in New Zealand and toward the top will be Arthur’s Pass. The main and only road from Christchurch to the West Coast cuts through the Southern Alps and some of the South Islands most awesome scenery. Wonder what I was up to this day last year?

Starting across Arthur's Pass

Arthur's Pass

The road is about 150kms long and highlights the one main difference between biking in New Zealand and England. In England you’ll happily ride 100 miles to find 10 miles of good roads, here you’re never more than 10 miles away from 100 miles of awesome, lightly trafficked and well laid super twisty tarmac.

Arthur's Pass

Winding down the West Coast side of Arthur's Pass

Spending the best part of a full days riding along Arthur’s Pass with improving weather all the way led to a choice of two towns at the far end, Westport or Greymouth. On the way down, we’d stopped in Greymouth, a small industrial town with not much to shout about, so I took in the extra 100kms to Westport to find a smaller industrial town with even less to shout about. In complete contrast to Wanaka and Queenstown, two of the most beautiful little towns half way down the West Coast, these two were where the business of fishing and mining is done, but with the distances involved, everyone touring the South Island ends up staying at one or t’other.

Riding to Westport

Near Westport - a rock overhangs the road

Deciding not to hang around, it was all go to Picton for the ferry north. Stopping in a small, cheap and extremely new and clean motel on the way (a key? Well if you insist, but most people don’t use them... there’s no crime here!) The ride to Picton can be fairly plain, but the short twisty Queen Charlotte Highway is an awesome way to arrive in another funtional little town. 

Queen Charlotte Sound

Just outside Picton

I was on the early ferry to Wellington to get a good start slogging up the North Island. There’s only one main road up from Wellington for 100kms or so and it’s not the most interesting, coupled with strong winds it made for a long day in the saddle. The main break from the long trek was meeting Harry, a Brit touring the world on a vegetable oil and diesel powered Enfield Bullet, an interesting looking bike and experiment in what might be the future of bike engines, vege oil! 

Boarding the ferry as the sun rises

3 hours later exiting to Wellington

Harry and his vege-oil powered Bullet

Once you get over that hurdle though, from New Plymouth there’s another 151 kilometre road that had been recommended and recommended over and over by almost every biker I’d met, the Forgotten World Highway, something I’d somehow missed on the way south first time. Starting as a road between Stafford and Taumarunui that was never quite completed and has a stretch of gravel road in the middle amongst several ‘ghost towns’, now deserted with the decline of a railway that runs though.

True to its description, you fuel up in Stafford (there’s none along the way) and shoot through to Taumarunui which takes forever because you’re chopping up and down gears winding around hillsides and through gorges.

The Highway begins innocently enough

The road starts twisting

Through a tunnel

Typical section of road - spot the trafic!

Onto gravel

More twists and turns

Dropping down to a sort of hairpin

Highway ends, 151kms later

After camping in Taumarunui the plan was to head around Coromandel, apparently a pretty beach-y peninsula. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t playing ball at all, heavy cloud with on and off rain meant a loop around wasn’t all it could have been, so I cut it short and headed up to Auckland to wait out what was supposed to be a poor few days ahead.

True to the weatherman’s word, the heavens opened as I sloshed into Auckland, for a soaking wet few days, the lowlight of which was riding back from the garage in a torrential downpour... wet now dry later. For every lowlight though there’s two highlights, finishing second in a pub quiz with a crack English / Kiwi team, and sorting out a solution to ship my bike home.

That last one was really the last major problem sorted which was a huge relief. Shipping by sea turns out to be relatively cheap with almost half the price set aside for making a crate. Mentioning this to Sebastian at BMW in Auckland turned up an offer of a free BMW shipping crate, improving things further. With all that taken care of, it was time to get moving up to Cape Reinga.