Cycling NZ26 - Day 7 - Mozzie Hell!

It’s 0408 zulu. My sleeping bag is full of dead mosquitoes. 

Only a short update here to confirm that I am still alive. 

Yesterday was start of the Timber trail. An unearthly hard grade of rock strewn washed out trail and logging track. No place for a fat man and his moose of a bike. No real beauty in this place as all I can see for miles and miles is native virgin vegetation all around. 

Best laid plans n all that. Well, because I did not know what lay ahead some rearrangement of the bike was needed so that I could fit it out with stores. Cold rations.  A large pack of soft white tortillas, jars of peanut butter and hazelnut and chocolate spread. Cheese triangles and smoked chorizo plus handfuls of chocolate bars. Plus huge quantities of water. The bike now weighs a ton. 

One thousand times perhaps I wrestled the sucker over washout and fallen trees and up impossible grades. For this is a place no man even with a horse should ever venture. 

Toward the end of the day I search for my planned overnight stay. There. There! proclaims Google.  Yes, I see it too….

The one thing. No, the 101 things that Google…

Continued…

The one thing of 101 things that Google refuses to tell you is how far away a place is it and what the terrain is like especially here for it has zero knowledge of the trails.  I can see my destination on the map but there is no indication of how to get there. Straight line is about 3 miles. It may take 100 though going by the few tracks that snake their way through these mountains.  I’m totally isolated in every way that matters.  Good decision making is starting to feel like a flip of a coin. 

I have a moment as I descended 1000 ft from the high peak on today’s section. It’s 4pm and I’m lost. Nearest town with any chance of food but no lodgings is 1 hour’s cycle ride away in the wring direction. In carefully studying all the map sources that I have I conclude that Google has obviously given up the will to live and simply states ‘I dunno’ with a shrug of its shoulders. The garmin Crap nav is utterly and completely lost.  As useful to me right now as a brick. I’m paralysed with indecision. 

Just then another tour cyclist comes down the hill towards me. I wave him down. A much fitter young man from the Czech Republic. We chat through broken English and a lot of finger pointing. His mapping app is superior yet cannot see my destination for today. However he says that there is a freedom campsite, his destination for the day, just 2 clicks down the track. 

Sometimes in life the simplest solution is often the best. No way can I press on without information about how to get to my destination. Nonetheless it still took me probably 5 minutes to conclude that yes the right decision is to use the freedom camp site. I have basic rations and water. Yes you know this is the right decision Wayne. This is supposed to be a life journey not a race for your life. 

It’s a beautiful evening at the camp site.  Only a few of us here. Tour cyclist plus one Maori lad in a camper who comes here for the remoteness and to obviously get high on his stash. Nonetheless a loveli lad to chat to who I guess is out of his job originally as a forest ranger and then as a metal fabricator / fitter / welder.   There’s also 2 lasses both I guess in their 20’s on their loaded tour bikes. Built like young mountain gazelles with a life full of dreams and hopefully without regret still ahead. One lass from Oxford, who has just finished her degree at Durham university, is here on a work visa but trying to have her ‘fun’ before getting on with realities of life. 

I’m sat on the bench with cold rations and water. In my wisdom in the last shop I had seen and so bought a chunk of roast pork too.  In celebration and with a smile on my face I pull it out of the bottom of my bag!  There’s a Mr Softee joke somewhere in there but I am really trying to be a good boy!

Nonetheless, sat in the sun eating roast pork - it’s the best thing to have happened to me all day 😋

Ciao for now.