Two Islands on Two Wheels in Two Months: Blenheim to Pedaller's Rest, Ward

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Weather good enough to cycle, but it's a Sunday, and what does that mean? Farmer's market! I have fresh fruit again at last. This is the Marlborough Farmer's Market in Blenheim, as recommended by one of the market organizers I know at home. It is definitely the largest market here that I have been to, with between 10-20 vendors. I couldn't find any apples, which was a little bit disappointing, but I did manage to score some plums and blueberries. One of the guys running the market also gave me a free omelette so I actually had a half-decent breakfast. It was a very nice change from oatmeal.

Not much cycling news to report. The winds were pretty strong, and for once they were actually a bit of a tailwind, so I managed some decent speeds. Some of the trucks were cutting it pretty close though. New Zealand has to have a lareg number of traffic accidents. There are signs up all along the motorways cautioning people to drive safely. I'll put some of the more interesting ones up in a later post.

The place I'm staying at tonight and last night is a "Bikepackers." The name of the hostel is "Pedaller's Rest," and it is pretty much a hostel that caters exclusively to cyclists. Anyone can stay there who wants to, but it's not that far to the next nearest town in either direction by car so mainly cyclists are the only people who stay there. It is located almost exactly halfway between Blenheim and Kaikoura, so the location is an ideal stopping point. Apparently there are a number of places like this spread across the South Island. I don't think there were any on the North Island. When I first showed up I thought I was going to be spending the night alone, but then two British girls showed up so I have some company. Their names are Alex and Becky. They're the first younger tourers I've met- 24 yrs old- all the other cyclists on the North Island that I met/passed were around the 50 yr old mark.

Pedaller's Rest: As you can see, it's just a pretty basic hut with beds, showers, toilets, and cooking facilities. There were only the three of us staying there the first night, but on the second five other tourers showed up! There are definitely more touring cyclists on the South Island.

Ended up staying another night at this cyclist retreat to go on a supposedly beautiful hike up to a local gorge, Sawcut Gorge, with the British girls. The hike turned out to be a little more difficult than we were led to believe it would be. We made the mistake of not cycling to the start of the actual hike, which was about 11km away from the hut. So we walked. And we walked. And we walked some more. It took about an hour and a half to get to the beginning of the hike. The countryside was pretty scenic, a lot of vineyards and sheep and cattle herds. But this walk was only the first challenge to surmount. About half of the actual walk was literally through a river. The rest was pretty much half-walk, half-climb through the rock/scrub surrounding the river. But we plowed ahead. And two and a half hours later we were rewarded with an extremely picturesque view of the gorge. It was a gigantic ravine through humongous hills with the river running through the bottom. It was so big that it was too large to fit within a camera lens, it was that big.

The troubles didn't end once we finally made it to the actual gorge. One of my flip-flops literally snapped in half from the force of the river's current on the way back to the hostel. And then the other one fell off when I slipped, and it floated away down the river, never to be seen again. I had hiking/biking shoes with me so I didn't have to walk back barefoot; had changed to flip-flops earlier in the day because the biking shoes kept filling up with rocks in the river. So now I need to replace my flip-flops. We were also plagued with a lack of food. Neglecting the sheer magnitude of the hike, we hadn't brought too much in the way of food supplies with us. A bag of cookies, an apple, a nut/oat bar, and a bag of Skittles were all that sustained us the entire day. But this we recovered from. We bought some lamb chops and vegetables from the family running the hostel when we returned, grilled up the chops and stir-fried the vegetables, made some rice. Then we devoured the lot. It was a good ending to the day.

Five other cyclists- not together- showed up at the hostel on this second day. It was really surprising to get back to the hut and see a lot of other people. This bikepackers is definitely a place where the adjective "remote" applies.