Central Otago & The Rail Trail

North of Dunedin we spent a night in Moeraki, taking photos of the famous round boulders!

From here we headed inland across Central Otago, the land here was populated originally during the Gold Rush years of the late 19th century....however with no gold left it was deserted leaving small towns with very little of interest to inspire both inhabitants or tourists!! That was until 2000 when they develped the old railway line into a 150km cycle track! We loved the landscape and towns we were driving through so decided we would go and tackle part of this now very popular cycle ride! Our adventure started in the small town of Clyde, first off we needed to get some bikes and ture to form we searched out the best bargain! Why pay for two bikes, when one will do? So yes we ended up on a tandem! So with our panniers full, we mounted the bike with me at the front! What a disaster!!! I could not control the bike and it wobbled all over the place, I was quickly regretting our frugel decision - we had 100km to do on this bike and I couldn't even cycle it out of the carpark! After an hour of raised voices and near death experiences (I don't think our relationship could have handled much more!!!) we swapped positions....and for all it felt quite unnerving having no control over steering or brakes I will have to admit that we were much better off with Chris at the helm!!! The first day we cycled the 35km to Ophir, a lovely little village of about 30 houses...we were booked into the backpackers lodge which made a nice change to sleeping in the van! We ended up chatting with the couple who owned the property, the guy was originally from Seaham (very close to where Chris is from), they had a very interesting life - but I'm afraid I can't say anymore as it will spoil Chris's Mums birthday present! The following day we had set ourselves quite a challenge...to do the next 60km by 2pm! We were up and going at sunrise, 8am, racing along on our tandem passing through long tunnels (torch essential), across 100m viaducts, along the edges of deep gorges and through routes blasted out of the hillside - it was stunning scenery!!! We arrived into Ranfurly in perfect time to grab a quick ice-cream before our transport came to pick us up and deliver us back to Clyde! We'd had an amazing time, if only we'd had more time & money it would have made the perfect pub crwal!! But to be honest we were probably in need of the exercise!!

The smiles didn't last that long!!!