This weekend I went off to do the St. James bike loop with Malc and Gabby. It’s two days (well, it was for us), and it’s mostly 4wd track though quite a bit of it is off-road. I think somewhere it says it’s grade 3 or something, but, apart from steepness it’s pretty straightforward. DOC has opened up both ends of the track to 4wd enthusiasts (and motorbikers) which definitely changes the “feel” of the ride. Still, we had gorgeous weather and it was nice to be out and about.
As you can see from the map, we did a side-trip to Lake Guyon. We’d intended to camp there (well, Malc and Gabby, I was hoping for space in the 4 person biv). As expected, being Labour weekend (public holiday) it was extremely full everywhere. So, it seemed pointless to camp there where it was busy anyway, may as well make a bit more progress along the route and find some space to ourselves. So, we biked on and found a fine place here to camp. There was a stream nearby we could take water from, and enough flat space to pitch a tent.
I setup my bivvy bag. It’s a miserable way to sleep, at least mine is. It gets super hot and then sweaty and clammy and the sandflies are around and generally it’s just quite average. I did feel somewhat resilient though, I mean, it was just one night. I realise reading the previous sentence might not make it sound like I was particularly resilient but still ;)
The next day…
we headed on around and out. A nice couple of swing bridges and old huts to see. We’d hoped to go to the hotpools at cow stream, but, we saw about 3 4wd trucks headed in and a bunch of e-bikers and decided to flag it. Labour weekend is definitely not the weekend for a quiet relaxing time in a hot pool.
Anyway, it was excellent to stretch the legs and I thoroughly recommend bringing Gabby along on trips. She’s strong as an ox and was quite happy to be a wind break on the long routes with the headwinds blowing :)
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