Mountain Biking the Heaphy

Had been slightly dreading & quite excited about this weekend for a while. My friend Paddy is heading back to Ireland in March and has a few things on his NZ-tick list to finish off. One of which was mountain biking the Heaphy. It’s a 78km bike ride and you have to carry your gear on your back (or a freeload rack (rugged back-carrier))

Track’s profile looks like this:

It’s also not _at_all_ a round-trip… you can see a nice map here, so we helicoptered in (here’s Paddy)

I’m afraid I didn’t take many pictures – partly ‘cos it was raining a bit, partly ‘cos I didn’t have a convenient crash-proof place to keep it and mostly because Paddy and Ian both had go-pro’s (that odd looking box Paddy has in the picture above) with which they took masses of video. I’m hoping to get the finished product and link to it on the blog (in a month or two when they’ve finished the editing!)

Maaike was amazing – she definitely loves her new bike… though she definitely abused it on this trip. That said, the bike got its own back and she has a few new scrapes ;) here she is on the second day..

It made quite a change from the last time I was here, many many moons ago with Mhairi and Marcel when we tramped in fine weather. I do reckon mountain biking is the way to go though, if you’ve got the chance. It’s a stunning ride though with the scenery changing completely from beech forest on the East coast, to rainforest? on the West.. stunning.

Originally we’d planned on taking 3 days (2 nights) to do the trip, but as there was supposed to be a southerly coming through on the Saturday, we decided to press on (at Perry hut) and continue through to James Mackay hut. We were slightly naughty as we’d booked in to Perry.. but there was just enough room at Mackay hut (more due to luck than anything else). It would have been an uncomfortable night on the floor!

Then out on the Saturday – along the beach – all in all an excellent trip.

The other thing worthy of note was the hostel we stayed in (Rongo’s). It had the most wonderful collection of art installed around the place. Each summer the owner invites a “resident artist” out, to live in Karamea and “do art”.. and I think they generally gift a piece to the hostel.

All in all an excellent trip.

Updated 26-6-2013

Video from Paddy: