Girls Bike New Zealand 2010

If you enjoyed reading our Girls Bike New Zealand blog earlier this year, or if you have just stumbled across our site recently and liked what you saw, we’d be really grateful if you could nominate us in the Wales Blog Awards. You just need to fill in a few short questions – click here to nominate us

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Tori & Maria

It’s bike week, and we’re back on our bikes!

Maria is promoting her new event, the Cardiff Burn, taking place in Cardiff on Sunday 24 October 2010. Enter now!

And I’m racking up the mileage for a Sport Wales staff bike week competition – i found out that there are a lot of very steep valleys between Carmarthen and Clunderwen when you go via Llanboidy!! Thankfully I have a shiny new road bike, without the panniers!!

This is exciting news! Cardiff Explorers will launch on 8 July 2010.

Having been involved in various adventure/expedition networks when living elsewhere in the UK we realised that Cardiff was missing something. Cardiff Explorers will be the place where people can share stories, make contacts and get advice.

Maria and I are partnering up with Sarah Mayer, who runs the Polar People to bring you an eclectic mix of exciting speakers to inspire you and share their expertise.

We’ll meet once a month and membership of Cardiff Explorers is completely FREE, just drop us an email (tori@girlsbikenewzealand.com) if you’d like to be put on the mailing list. We’ll be giving away free outdoor kit at our launch event – now there’s a reason to come along!!

Hope to see you at 7pm at Terra Nova Bar in Cardiff Bay on 8 July.

We’re back in Wales now and today we visited the BBC in Llandaff to chat to Roy Noble about our adventure. Click here to listen to our interview.

All of that baking yesterday wasn’t for nothing.

At 9.00am this morning, Tori and I entered the office of Prime Minister John Key in Wellington.

We had been invited for a 20 minute chat about our journey across New Zealand and to talk about the Cycle Trail Project.

With full camera crew on-board, we have some outstanding footage of the whole event.

Today we wore our “Cwtch” t-shirts and daffodils. Not wanting to miss out on some edible welsh treats, Maria spent several hours in the kitchen making the most delicious Welsh cakes – quite some achievement without weighing scales or a hot plate!

We’ve packaged a few up ahead of our important engagement tomorrow morning.

8th Jan 2010 – 23rd Feb 2010.

Our journey has now been sucessfully completed. In 23 cycling days we managed to get oursleves and our bikes across the whole of New Zealand from Cape Reinga in the far North to Bluff at the far South.

Favourite bits: getting fit and eating lots of pies, simplicity of life on a bike with only 2 panniers, sunshine when it’s winter at home, variety of scenery, big mountain passes, stunning coast line and dramatic gorges, being outdoors all the time, C2C race and training on the Waimak and Goats Pass, meeting hundreds of fab people, a flat white (coffee to keep the wheels turning), freedom to go wherever we wanted, contributing to green travel, when a down-hill gets you up the next up-hill, hitting our top speed (73kpm!), no queues for anything, singer in Queenstown, creme brulee flavoured fudge in Kaikora, getting txt from people we met on route, finding each other after we’d lost each other in Plimmerton, jumping out of a plane at 12000ft, getting an applause at Bluff, edible gifts, very few mechanical issues, being able to sort the mechanical issues we did get ourselves with no male intervention, going fast, wearing newly washed cycling clothes, brilliant hospitality.

Toughest bits: freezing feet and numb toes in Lindus Valley, driving head wind leading to Queenstown that stopped us in our tracks even going down hill, paddling on the Avon during the C2C race in a sea kayak, long flat stretch between Dargaville and Brynderwyn, realising the journey has come to an end, tent leaking and waking up wet and freezing cold on more than one occasion, arriving in Queenstown and realising we’d have to camp as backpackers were full, being woken by Roy Noble at 4.00am for a radio interview after a late night out, having to look at Tori’s ridiculous tan.

Stats:

23 cycling days
2400km
max speed 73kmp
4-8hrs cycling per day
rest stops every 3-5 days
muffins eaten = lost count
muffins replaced by pies = 10
most car horn toots in a day = 15

Most common thoughts at the end of the day:

(1) Great, freeze dried pasta and tuna for dinner again!
(2) Bloody hell, this final 10k is taking a long time, at least I’m not running it! Note to self: peddle harder and I’II get there quicker.
(3) Bugger, not another night in the tent!
(4) I can’t wait to go skinny dipping and freshen up!
(5) I wonder what Tori would think if I suggest we keep going and do a night cycle?
(6) I wonder what country would be good to cycle next?

Most commonly asked questions:

(1) How far do you cycle each day? approx 100k
(2) Did you bring the bikes over from the UK? Yes
(3) Was that expensive? No, bikes go free on Air New Zealand
(4) Have you been friends for a long time? laugh, no we met through a newspaper article a few months ago

Things I’ve learned about Maria:

She invented a made up language at school and can still speak it!
Her tent pitch must always be perfectly flat
She loves skinny dipping
She likes doing headstands
She loves licorice.
She likes to go FAST
She has endless energy
She believes any culinary combination works, broccoli tea and cottage cheese porridge

Things I’ve learned about Tori:

She can drink 7 pints of beer and still walk without swaying
She misses her jewellery and make up
She’s fanatical about shaking her hair dry
She is very organised
She will never give up, even when the going gets tough
She’s very proud to be Welsh

We have one more very exciting engagement before we fly home so keep watching for our final post.

Day 23 – Lumsden to Bluff (118km)

Rudely awoken by a very nasty lady that was insisting that we hadn’t paid for our campsite was not the best start to our most exciting day. We left quickly (and had paid for the record, $26).

The road was flat, very flat with some vast agriculture land on both sides. We passed mainly deer parks but there certainly was not a shortage of beef and sheep farms also.

Shortly before arriving into Incercargill, we met an Italian cycle tourer that was shocked at the speed we were going. His mate had taken his panniers in the car as he was too tired to carry them. We exchanged a few words but then my desire to get to Bluff kicked in and we were off at top speed again. Wind still on our tail, we were flying along at over 30kph.

Invercargill was not particularly pleasant so we had a quick lunch, despite having already cycled 80km and were back on our bikes for the final 27km that would take us to Stirling Point in Bluff which marks the end of the SH. I was so eager to stand under the sign (similar to the one at Cape Reinga).

Rounding the corner and catching the first glimse of the sign brought a tear to my eye. We had done it. Champagne popping we carried out our standard Welsh flag dance ritual and those around, quizzed us on our journey accompanied by a round of applause.

Getting our sweaty kit off was great as we dived into the sea and began to swim to Stewart Island. Okay so we managed about 10mins before turning around and deciding to catch the ferry the next morning!

Day 22 – Queenstown to Lumsden (140km)

After a 2 day stay in New Zealands capital of partying, Queenstown, we were good to go. We were on the final stretch and we knew it. Sun still glorious and legs rested we opted for a slightly longer, but much more scenic route.

Having eaten too much pizza, creme brulee fudge and more than our fair share of wine, beer and rum a good long cycle was needed. The night before we had been to Winnies where a very talent 2 person band was playing. As a result I had ‘blue swayed shoes’ playing over and over again in my head and Tori had Beyonce’s ’single ladies’ on repeat in her head!

We found a cycle path leading out of the town that went on to take us all around the peninsula for 20km before we had to rejoin the SH6. From here we were lucky enough to have a great tail wind and we flew along with Lake Wakatipu on our right. We hit a new top speed of 73kph. We met a fellow British tourer, Pat, who was just starting out on his South to North journey. We felt for him with the strong headwind!

60km’s flew by quickly and we stopped for lunch. Toasted sandwich with as much we could stack in it as possible!

It began getting late as we rolled into Lumsden. A naughty fish and chips dinner followed by chocolate we were ready for bed. We camped at an idyllic campsite that night and happily chatted to some fishermen from Australia over a cup of tea.

Day 21 – Lindis Valley to Queenstown (118km)

Whilst packing up my panniers for our ride to Queenstown I was still on our high from the amazing downhill run from the top of the Lindis Pass the night before, it was amazing! However, for the first time during our journey it was really cold. Within minutes of setting off on our bikes we had stopped to find full gloves (not fingerless ones) and I resorted to putting my arm warmers on my lower legs to try and help keep my toes warm. We had all our layers on and headscarfs under our helmets – my watch read 5 degrees. It was 8am and the sun hadn’t penetrated the valley yet, and the unfortunatley the logic behind cycling faster to warm up, actually made us colder!

The scenery was spectacular and I was enjoying being on a bike because it meant that we got to look at it for longer! In Cromwell we met two Israeli guys, also peddaling around the South Island. After a very comfortable lunch stop on bean bags in the sunshine, we peddled on and caught up with the Israelis who were stopped at a road block whilst the Nevis Bluff was being blasted on the route to Queenstown. They were making the most of this unplanned break and offered us a cup of coffee and a cookie! Thanks guys. We needed this more than any other boost on the trip because we were about to face a head wind like no other. Gusts of south westerlies actually stopped us in our tracks. I was struggling to unclip my shoes from my peddals in time at the risk of being blown into the ditch by the wind. It is so demoralising when your normal downhill speed of 45+kph is reduced to less than 10kph even when you’re peddaling!!!!

The road was ridiculously busy, the wind reduced our average speed to about 10kph, and we were in a lot of pain with very sore bottoms (see stance in pic with the guys) – i’ll spare you the details!!