The Otago Rail Trail-29-31 Dec

Wake up in Middlemarch and do some tyre-switching, and set off around 11. It is burning hot with a huge sky- the countryside is barren and shadeless and looks like a steppe or a prairie. We ride and eat, eat and ride. In the middle of the afternoon we nap by a stream in a shaded gorge. There is an insistent piping sound and I wonder, half-asleep, if there is an exotic flightless bird in the vicinity. After a while it becomes clear that it's a lost lamb looking for its mother. These (and rabbits) are still the only animals we've seen.]

There are plaques every couple of kilometres beside the trail and we stop conscientiously to read them all. Thus we learn about the Taieri Pet, a cloud formation created when the north-westerly blows up over the Rock and Pillar Range, piling the cloud in towering layers. We also learn that the steam trains were liable to set the countryside on fire with sparks from their engine-boxes, and that barrels of water were kept near wooden bridges so that any passersby could douse them if they caught alight.

In the evening we start to ride again. About ten or fifteen kilometres from Ranfurly we stop at a pub to fill our water. There are unfriendly signs on the door threatening cyclists who try to have a surreptitious piss and get unauthorised liquids. It turns out to be the last preserve of the local bogan species and we have a beer and watch them come and go in their trucks, red swollen men and little dessicated women, all with fags hanging from their hands.
We sleep in the campground at Ranfurly. Because the sun goes down so late, it's hard to stay awake until dark. We are fed, watered and reading The New Yorker (told you it had a lot of words) by sunset.


I wake up in the morning feeling like I've been hit by a truck. Probably the heat the previous day. We pack everything anyway, choke down some unadorned porridge then go to the supermarket for real breakfast. When we start riding I feel OK. It's cooler than the previous day but the wind is picking up again. We cross the pass and also the 45th parallel, halfway between the south pole and the equator. From there we are suddenly riding downhill all the way to Omakau and our second night's camp.

In the campground we meet a scientist working on discovering the causes of diurnal changes in diameter of pine trees. He is utterly incapable of small talk so we discuss stem diameters and dendrographs for a while. There are also 2 kids riding the trail with their parents- their mother tells us that there's a no-whingeing policy, but when the going gets tough they get a piece of chocolate every 3 kilometres. Nobody seems to have informed them about stranger danger so they pop up every few minutes asking questions- what do you eat for energy? Where do you come from? Why do you have accents? When are you catching the boat to Wellington. Camped beside us are another family from a different demographic (the kids have mullets and have to carry all their own gear) who keep to themselves and strenuously ignore us when we try to talk to them.


In the morning the scientist is up first- he sleeps in a coffin-like bivvy bag and has no incentive to linger in bed. We are also up early and eat a huge plate of leftover pasta before setting off. We cover the 30 km to Clyde a bit sadly, stopping every 10 seconds to take photos. There are fields of purple flowers everywhere and we pass the smallest post office in NZ. We try to buy a postcard to send Ange and Renee but nobody's around. It's still more or less downhill, beside a river now so that the enormous sky is held at bay. At the very end of the trail we see a family who's just started riding and have a puncture already. That's the only puncture we've seen on the whole trail.

At the end of the trail we stop and eat all the food we have left- cheese sandwiches, nutella, some tomatoes that have seen better days. We sit on the damp grass, eating and looking at the road we're going to take- it's uphill and the traffic is heavy, and we both get depressed.
The hill is brief but the traffic is real. After 3 days on a carless track we're used to being kings of the road and aren't keen on sharing. Also, there is a raging headwind that sweeps occasional showers towards us. We labour up the valley towards Cromwell beside a milky-blue dam, half considering stopping there for the night. The next town after that is Queenstown, another 50 km away.

We eat in Cromwell and I buy a tube to replace the one that exploded. It's still early so we decide to keep going, thinking that we can spend NY Eve in Queenstown living it up. The wind is still raging and we stop to buy cherries just outside town-we can't carry them so we just sit there next to the road in the eddies of dust and eat half a kilo of them. Then off we go.

The road is narrow and rather busy. We're riding in a gorge with a speedy river the same colour as the dam roiling along beside us. It starts raining but there's nowhere to stop and put on our rain gear so we just keep going. There's about 20 cm of chewed-up shoulder we can claim as our own, and it takes all our concentration to stay on the white line and keep off the road, while also avoiding falling over the railing into the gorge. The shoulder is populated with the damp, decomposing bodies of stoats which we ride over every few kilometres.

It keeps on raining. Apart from the lack of space, the cycling isn't bad-the elevation drawing made it look like an endless uphill but it's not the case. Coming out of the gorge there is a break in the traffic and we ride along for a few peaceful minutes through the misty hills with the hawks circling above us. We stop for 3 minutes to eat our emergency cake but have to start agan because we start to freeze.

On and on through the rain. We arrive, finally, in Queenstown in the evening, and find there's nowhere to stay except the rugby field. We desperately don't want to sleep there and eventually find a place in the campground, though not without considerable risk to our marriage. We find a bungalow which is not being used, and pitch our tent on the verandah. It's dry there, secluded, and we have a view down over the lake and the peaks of the Remarkables (they are).
After dinner we sit on our verandah with a bottle of wine, not saying much. Marcin suggests we go into the tent and talk in there. Within 10 seconds we're both unconscious, and the midnight fireworks barely make an impression.