I just wrote the following article for our club Newsletter...
'Down South for the Shortest Day'
Our son who is at Otago University had indicated some time ago that at the end of first semester break he would quite like to have a look at the West Coast by motorcycle as a pillion with me. This suited my plans just fine as any family-endorsed excuse for a longer ride is an opportunity to be seized. So ignoring the fact that the university holiday period included the shortest day of the year I set out from Palmerston North on 11th June in the general direction of Dunedin.
Being the enthusiastic type I had the tent and sleeping bag strapped on the back as the plan was to commune with nature and camp out as often as conditions permitted. The first night in Picton started the camping experience well enough – not too cold but I definitely didn’t take many layers off before crawling into the sleeping bag.
Day 2 was clear and cold so I started out by heading eastwards from Picton across to Cloudy Bay and down the top of the east coast to Blenheim. There were some muddy bits on the unsealed section which the road tires on my Honda ST 1300 didn’t like very much but the coastal scenery was superb. I then looped back up to Picton and followed the nice bendy coastal route around to Havelock and on to Farewell Spit. This included a detour up to French Pass to overlook D’Urville Island and a bit more of the northern Marlborough Sounds. Interestingly as I was leaving Picton I waved merrily at two oncoming Honda Goldwings and for a moment thought this was going to be a popular riding experience. Turns out these were the only bikes I saw in the South Island for the entire trip until I got back to the same spot 13 days later and saw what I assume to be the exact two Goldwings riding the same stretch of road.
Day 3 dawned cold and clear at Farewell Spit lulling me into a false sense of security for weather conditions yet to come. My wife had given me a pair of possum fur gloves which was very sweet of her but, after thanking her for the gesture, proceeded to bury them deep inside a pannier. However at 2 degrees that morning I had somewhat of a change of heart and went searching for them and they did indeed turn out to be quite a finger-saving layer.
The road down and across to Westport is a bikers dream. That evening however, heading up the West Coast towards my night stop at Karamea was like a trip back into the Industrial Revolution. Talk about a choke hazard: Clear still night, ten thousand coal fires and a temperature inversion holding all the smoke at helmet level!
The trip down the West Coast to Franz Joseph Glacier on Day 4 included a detour up to Arthurs Pass and was again brilliant riding. That evening however the foul weather came out to play. I still put the tent up but that was to be the last night without a real roof over my head.
Day 5 through to Wanaka and then Arrowtown was cold, heavy rain with the temperature not getting above 4 degrees all day. My body and legs were warm enough with multiple thermal layers but I’d well and truly lost touch with my fingertips by the time I got to Wanaka. I called in at a local bakery to nick a pair of their food hygiene gloves to go between the possum fur ones and my riding gloves which sort of helped bring my fingers back to life. Arriving in Arrowtown at 5:00pm was right on their mid-winter sunset where I opted for the indoor bed alternative. The local pub was also the perfect place to have a hot meal and watch the All Blacks keep the visiting French team scoreless for 80 minutes.
Weather the next day wasn’t much better so the trip beside Lake Wakatipu out to Glenorchy in rain and 3 degrees was a tad nippy. Didn’t matter, I got the obligatory photograph of the bike strategically placed in front of the historic boat shed. I then retreated back to Queenstown and zipped up Coronet Peak as far as I dared go above the rapidly descending snowline. After a rather dodgy U-turn in the snow it was on down to Te Anau where it might have stopped raining momentarily but I think I probably just imagined that. I found a room as soon as I got there, dropped my dry stuff, kept my wet stuff on and headed up to the Homer Tunnel. The road was closed from the tunnel through to Milford Sound for maintenance so I couldn’t go all the way through. I thought the funny thing was me being the only vehicle on the road the whole way out to the tunnel and back to Te Anau. NZ obviously doesn’t market itself very well to the hardy tourist market!
Day 7 was down to Bluff which, needless to say, was raining and blowing a gale. I tried several times to get a photo of the bike under the sign saying it was 18,958 km to London but kept getting sea spray on the lens. I didn’t need to worry about the salt spray on the bike as the continuous downpour all the way back up to Alexandra washed it all off many times over.
I hadn’t been watching the news but a young lady at the Invercargill petrol station had told me there was a major snow storm on the way in. Now I admit I generally treat road and weather advice from young ladies at petrol stations with a degree of healthy skepticism but unbeknownst to me this one actually happened to be on the right track. It was only drizzling in Alexandra when I got there but I decided to watch the evening news for the first time. The sight of floods along the East Coast, numerous road closures and a major snowstorm hot on my heels came as somewhat of a surprise! Of my three choices of roads into Dunedin two were currently blocked by flooding and the third involved back-tracking a chunk of the previous days ride which didn’t hold great appeal.
Next morning an older man in a petrol station (who spoke confidently) said Highway 85 via Ranfurly would ‘probably’ open by the time I got to the flooded section so I opted to go that way. Other than riding through floodwaters, avoiding fallen trees (complete with the ground they used to be attached to) and nearly following a ‘missing’ bit of road down a hillside, I successfully navigated my way into Dunedin.
After my son (Jamie’s) guided tour of his new home at Otago University where I donated him the tent, he jumped on the back and together we went for a tour of the Dunedin hinterland. As part of the exploration I managed to get a puncture in the rear tire. Two in fact. The first I repaired on the side of the road, the second wasn’t to become apparent until we were trying to out-run the next days blizzard. It appeared to be an old bathroom tile we’d inconveniently run over.
Anyway, that night we had a nice dinner with my Otago uncle, aunt and cousins. Over a bottle or two of their finest wine we discussed the next day’s forecasted “severe snow storm” and unanimously agreed the Metservice were being hugely pessimistic and we’d have more than enough time to beat it to the West Coast. At that stage the weather system was coming in from the east and the West Coast wasn’t predicted to get snow, only 130km/hr winds: how bad could that be?!
So the next day we got up early, checked my rear tire and found it had ‘only’ lost 5 psi overnight. This should have been a warning that something still wasn’t quite right. Anyway with Jamie as my pillion we made a beeline towards the West Coast via Milton which was the lowest altitude of the roads heading out of Dunedin. But sure enough as we approached Alexandra, (a) the snow started to descend, and (b) my rear tire did likewise. We limped into the Honda shop in Alexandra and politely asked everyone to drop what they were doing and attend to our little problem before we all got snowed in for the week. Two hours later and $100 poorer I had two puncture repairs and a remaining non-leaking hole of unknown depth which we decided would go away if ignored.
The rest of that day consisted of tolerating the rain, sleet and 1 degree temperatures whilst headed as fast as conditions permitted towards Haast, all the time watching the snow on the surrounding hillsides get lower and lower. When the snow-free forests of Haast Pass drew into sight we were a couple of rather happy campers!
We pushed on through to Fox Glacier for the night where the evening sun was almost trying to shine through the drizzle. The next day we strolled up the two glaciers to have a close up look whilst ignoring the sand blasting we were receiving from the rather ‘fresh’ easterly. Interestingly there weren’t many tourists about that day.
The plan was to then ride on up to Greymouth for the night so again disregarding the forecast 130km/hr winds we headed on up the road - until we got out of the first bit of shelter that is. Point to note is ST 1300’s are not handling at their best in 130km/hr cross winds. Swallowing my pride we retraced the 25 km back to Franz Joseph for a second night at the glaciers.
The next day funnily enough the road north from Franz Joseph was marked as being closed. Apparently the forest canopy had landed on top of it. The weather looked fine from our hostel window so we donned helmets, pretended we hadn’t seen the ‘Road Closed’ signs and headed northwards again. Besides getting some funny looks from the cleanup crews, we managed to pick our way between the fallen trees and general foliage to make it up to Greymouth in time for a well-deserved Subway lunch. By this time the rain had stopped and the wind had dropped to a more acceptable ‘strong wind warning’ level as opposed to the earlier Storm Warning.
Day 11, being the 21st June was the shortest day of the year. The riding was awesome for the trip up to Motueka via Spring Junction and Murchison. By this time the sun had come out and the snow had left its mark on every mountain whereby my general inaptitude with a camera still produced some spectacular results. Our scheduled ferry crossing was lunchtime the next day and in phoning the Interislander that evening I learned that all sailings were currently cancelled - something about a 20-meter swell or some such thing.
We woke up on Day 12 to find it was raining again!! They had only forecast showers so being the eternal optimists and believing the showers were in fact only going to be light, we chose to ride the curly coastal route back towards Picton. Wrong again. Heavy rain all the way with sleet and snow flurries while crossing the hills behind Nelson. Got into the Picton ferry terminal but didn’t bother taking our helmets off, just stood there in the rain for half an hour beside the bike before being allowed to ride aboard. You’d have thought one of the waiting campervans would have at least offered us a cup of coffee given how pitiful we must have looked!
Our ferry was to be the first sailing since the storm abated as the swell had now dropped down to a not quite idyllic 5-meters. We used every available tie-down point to strap the bike in but still half expected to find it somewhere other than where we left it when the ferry finally pulled into Wellington. All was good though (although a few of the passengers weren’t) so disemboweled the boat, checked into our hotel and Jamie thawed out enough to run in the Wellington Marathon the next day. Then it was back to Palmerston North with an extra 5006 km on the ST’s clock.
And yes, I would do it again on the week of the shortest day of year. I’d still largely ignore the weather forecast but maybe I’d take some waterproof over-gloves next time. The tent was a bit of an optional extra but a great trip none the less with some peculiar challenges, memorable sights and interesting experiences along the way. Probably not one to heavily advertise as a ‘must do’ in the tourist brochures though!
