Caroline Crick – Four Go Biking in Otago

 Read more from Caroline here.

I had several reasons for biking the Otago Central Rail Trail this spring  – the stunning scenery, the promise of great food on offer in some of Otago's pubs providing a good excuse to over indulge after a hard day's pedaling, plus the chance to bond with my 17 year old daughter before she heads off to university next year . I was also quite keen on the thought that 160 km of gravel track rising to 618m above sea level was going to get things in shape for the summer without having to go within spitting distance of the local gym. So that meant I could spend my gym membership on – a holiday!

The Rail Trail promises an intoxicating mix of physical exercise combined with a clean slate to indulge in some really good food – which of course you'll deserve after four hours of pedaling a day.  Our party of four – myself and Ali, plus my 17 year old daughter Rosie and her friend Sam – booked our own accommodation before we left but arranged bike hire, baggage transfer and return transport with Trail Journeys, based in Clyde. They supplied comfort bikes for Rosie and Sam – lightweight mountain bikes with suspension and pannier racks, chunky tyres and mileage computers so they could keep track of how fast and how far.

Ali did the whole trail on a road bike she bought on Trade Me for $70 with no suspension. Known for tackling active challenges from a standing start with absolutely no prior training, she may never get on a bike again but we did have fun during the trip, despite her starting off with a flat tyre. I took my own bike – a road bike with suspension that saved me from the worst of the gravel rattles but probably was not as comfy as the girls' bikes.

Photo: Setting Off: leaving Clyde on a chilly October morning

After the 750 km drive down the West Coast to Clyde, through hail, rain and sunshine, we arrived in time to drop our bags in the huge old bedrooms of the Dunstan Hotel, take a few photos of the lovely old stone buildings in the evening light, and sit down for dinner in the Hotel dining room. Two days in the car gives you a good appetite and of course we were eating to give ourselves energy for the next day's ride, they do know how to feed you in Otago!

Day  one saw us collect the hire bikes from Trail Journeys and drop off our luggage so we only had to ride with day packs. We pedaled confidently out of Clyde in sleet and rain which the weather forecast promised was just a passing shower, towards Omakau.  After a coffee and muffin stop in Alexandra the October hail showers eased, the sun appeared and we reckoned we were going to have the weather gods on our side for the next four days.  

To get to Omakau you ride along the pretty banks of the Clutha River, (thinking 'this is fun it's going to be easy') and then up into the Manuherikia Valley where the slight incline heralds further hills on the way up (thinking this is fun but maybe a little harder…) . We stopped at Chatto Creek pub for a cup of tea big enough to swim in and a picnic lunch, and then ploughed on up a slow but steady incline towards Omakau. The last bit of uphill is called, appropriately, Tiger Hill, before a welcome downhill scoot into Omakau. The two girls were sitting outside the pub looking very smug when Ali and I caught up with them, and our bags were waiting for us in the hallway. We stayed at the Omakau Pub, being early in the season there were not that many other options available. The food was excellent and we enjoyed an early morning pedal around neighbouring Ophir. This is a scenic old village redolent of the Gold Rush, complete with village gaol for miscreants and bike thieves, and the historic Ophir Post Office and bridge.

Photo: Ophir: The post mistress in the still functioning Ophir Post Office

From Omakau to Oturehua on Day Two was supposed to be our shortest ride, but with the added trip around Ophir and the long climb up over the Raggedy Range into the Poolburn Gorge, it seemed like a long day. Our mileometer read 36km by the end of the day, and the toughest stretch was along the Ida Valley which seemed to go on forever. But that was at the end of the day when we were tired, before that we'd enjoyed the sunshine as we climbed (slowly of course) to our unbelievable lunch stop at the first of the Poolburn tunnels. A picnic on the rocks above the tunnel (note to bikers, no matter how big last night's dinner, you can never take enough food for lunch) makes the uphill bits worthwhile, looking out over the Dunstan ranges with the sun high in the blue Otago sky – magic indeed.

The two Poolburn Tunnels are long enough to warrant carrying a torch, and best to get off and walk, otherwise you risk riding into a wall or another biker, or just plain falling off. Once we'd negotiated them it was on along the Ida Valley, past Auripo and the Ida Valley Dam where they hold Curling competitions in midwinter, to the welcome sight of the Oturahua Pub. Four ice creams and ginger beers later we were ready to call Jeff from the Oturehua Lodge, who came down and picked us up from the pub – and then lent us a car so we could drive back down there for dinner. Nice people in Otago.  We managed a quick and very welcome soak in the Lodge spa pool before our meal, and later crashed with full tummies thanks to the Lamb Shanks  and beef and Guinness pie. Yum.

We woke to frosts over the farmland in the morning and then low cloud set in, but no rain. The weather gods were still smiling, sort of. This, our third day, was also the longest at 58km, through to Hyde. After a pretty tiring second day we were all a little unsure how we would get on so we were on the bikes and pedaling by 9am. We'd planned a long day because on the map, this section is predominantly downhill, which it was, once we'd clambered the 7km up to the 618m summit just before Wedderburn. Time for a stop and a commemorative picture, but hanging out for a coffee. Yes biking plus uphill equals caffeine craving.

So we biked on, gloriously downhill to the red shed at Wedderburn, where they had a loo, a coffee vending machine, a historical video and warm place to sit. And after the red shed comes the green Wedderburn Shed of Graham Sydney fame, sitting square and familiar, despite the fact that it was removed and then re-instated by the local community.

Biking on from the Wedderburn Shed, you know you are in the Maniototo. It really is like riding through a Sydney painting – the lowering sky, rolling plains, and we were lucky to have just a gentle breeze – I wouldn't like to ride through here in a headwind. Still downhill, we averaged nearly 20km per hour and made it to Ranfurly by lunchtime – very smug with almost half the day's distance under our belts. Another pub, another lunch – we thought we deserved something hot today. You can justify anything on the Rail Trail. We managed to keep out of the Art Deco shops – no one wanted to carry any extra weight with them.

From Ranfurly to Hyde was another 30km but we rolled on through the landscape, the two girls a distant dot. We crossed the magnificent stone bridge over Cap Burn at Tiroiti, walked through Prices Tunnel and then negotiated a softer sandy track and some uphill (with slightly gritted teeth!) through the Taieri Gorge to finally drop down to Hyde, a  welcome sight in the warm late afternoon light. Smiles all round after that one!

Our gastronomic experiences reached a hiatus here, with Michelle from the Hyde Hotel serving the kind of country farmhouse meal you only read about these days. I would have ridden twice the distance for the home cooked ham on the bone alone.  Add Waldorf salad, meat loaf, Pavlova and rhubarb and apple crumble and you'll never want to leave. The friendly atmosphere as all the bikers sat around the shared tables laughing about their trail experiences was the cherry on the top for me.

In the morning we took our time leaving – time for a coffee in the café after the breakfast laid on by the hotel, and then our last gentle amble across the Strath Taieri Plain down to Middlemarch. We stopped to look at the memorial to the 1943 Hyde rail incident, and rode alongside the stunning Rock and Pillar range with its crenellated rock formations lightly dusted with snow.

Middlemarch lay quiet and sleepy at the end of our trail. We collapsed on the grass beside a line of old railway wagons and slapped each other on the back. The girls looked like they were ready to ride back again. Us more experienced ladies just shook our heads and lay back and enjoyed the sunshine, feeling sure that by now we were fit, toned and shapely beyond our wildest imaginings.

Eventually we gathered our wits, bikes, water bottles and paraphernalia and headed off to Blind Billy's motor camp where we ate every remaining scrap of food and then lazed the afternoon away with books, cups of tea and a few zzzzs. An evening walk around the township gave us a chance to enjoy the historic Middlemarch railway station, where you can catch the Taieri Gorge train to Dunedin – a good excuse to come back again.

The next morning the good people from Trail Journeys picked us and our gear up and took us back to their main depot at Clyde, from where we started the long West Coast drive home in the rain, and the hail, and the sunshine.

Photo: Sam and Rosie at the highest point on the rail trail