It’s been quite a busy month and since the last blog we had a local ride around the Wellington Bays in marginal weather, spent 10 days on the Gold Coast and today we had a long Ulysses ride…and I’ve had little sleep with watching Le Tour de France. The usual pre-ride prep’ had the tyres checked yesterday and gear ready for this morning, as even though the weather wasn’t looking too good I trusted the forecast and sure enough, there was a hint of blue, so I was down at the bike by 0900…but still stowed the wets! After filling at BP Mana I got to the Plimmerton Weigh Station by 0930, the skies were blue, it was 9º and it looked like a decent ride was going to be had. By 1000 we had eleven bikes ready to go and after a short briefing, at which we decided to extend the planned ride slightly, Steve led out up SH1 with me at TEC. The first leg to Bulls was pretty uneventful with a short pause to regroup in Levin, then we took Campion Rd to bypass Sanson and re-emerge on SH1 by the Bulls Bridge. After a 15 minute pause at the Mobil I led out, turning left onto High St to take Parewanui Rd out to the Golf Course, then onto Raumai & Santoft Roads. The traffic was quite heavy so on rounding the corner, we took it really slow until it looked like most were there, but when we paused on Raumai Rd because we were short of a couple of riders, Mike advised he had waited , he at High St. When they didn’t emerge from the gas station, he assumed they must have taken some back way out and he came on…….but they weren’t here…..I thought “Bugger”, then made the decision to continue. (As it turned out, one of the bikes failed to start and needed a push….can’t have been an ST but!!??) We came back out on SH3, cut across Williamsons Line to Wanganui Rd, heading into the Turakina Valley on Fern Flats Road and that’s when I made the next error. Instead of sticking to Fern Flats Rd (which is a right turn) I went straight ahead which put me on Waimutu Rd and deposited us on Turakina Valley Rd….Double Drat!! I had a rough idea of the options to get us to Hunterville from here, but hadn’t prepared for this, so after taking a right at Makuhou Rd, I had to check the map when we got to Smiths… and when we got to Galpins….and I still managed to find some gravel.
Never the less, we enjoyed some good riding and soon found ourselves in Hunterville, where a few of the riders gassed-up, we discovered Steve and the others had made it to Ashhurst, so we headed for Vinegar Hill and on to the Fusion (blue) café, arriving at 1415 for a rather late lunch. I was supposed to be home by 1500 so after a short chat I had to leave and try to get home by 1600. It was a pretty uneventful trip as I tried to stay within the allowable limits, finally getting home at 1615 having done 460Kms for the day at an economy of 18.7K/Ltr and the bike now has 93,962Kms racked up.
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Old Blog?
These blogs were posted on the KiwiBiker forum but I decided it was time for a change. Archives
January 2017
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