Rai Valley to Nelson
Daily total: 48km Running total: 185.12km
Skipped the early morning swim. Reason: freezing.
 |
| That is actually me! |
 |
| Early morning mist |
Continued the ride with Lizzy as still heading the same direction. We were warned about the big hills. 3 of them according to some, 2 according to others with a few going with 2.5. That confused me. Did it used to be a full hill then one day half it just vanished? How can you have half a hill?
The second hill we encountered had the power of 10 hills. It was proper gurt but we did collect a bunch of cyclists like we were collecting Pokemon. Picked a tourer called Julia and a couple of racer types. They kept themselves hermetic, not wishing to pollute their bubble with the cool kids with panniers! We climbed for ages, passing a fully decorated Christmas Tree on the way. Then climbed more and then some. We climbed for ages but the decent...wow the decent...it lasted forever and as there were logging trucks up ahead, no one could over take, the pack filled the road. The decent was grin inducing. As was the sight of the diary with it's formidable selection of ice cream at bottom. Everyone turned up (sans the racers) with massive grins. The decent made up for accent and the general heavy (by NZ standards) traffic on the road.
 |
| Just chilling being a Christmas Tree in the middle of nowhere. |
 |
| So happy to see these after I entered the Diary. |
We hit Nelson, chilled in the park. I brought the tone of the place down by drying out my tent in the middle of this really nice park. Felt like a proper vagabond, until a couple I was briefly talking to, emerged from the public toilets together with a look of just being busy about them. They won the bringing the tone down stakes.
My lack of phone coverage and general access to communication meant I had not sorted any accommodation out for Nelson. Julia was meeting her host, Philip from Warmshowers in the park. Philip turned up and inquired if anyone else needed a place to stay! Accommodation sorted and he was cool for me to stay two nights so I could go on the Dun Mountain Trail. Happy days.
Day 5. Dun Mountain Trail, mainly photos so rest bite from the words...
Dun Mountain Trail (round trip)
Daily total: 26km Running total: 211.12km
Scenes from morning walk
 |
| Bench with a view |
 |
| Hill top view. better than the bench. |
It was awesome! You get to climb about 800m over 13km then drop about the same over 9km. Arms ached from going down hill and yes, there was some terrible sign posting going on. That is it with the words. Photo time!!!
 |
| On route to the summit. |
 |
| The summit |
 |
| Summit bench |
 |
| The decent |
 |
| Dont worry. Not fallen off. Just dumped. |
No comments:
Post a Comment