November 21, 2020
A buffeting
Featherston to Lake Ferry
This morning, the underlying motive for this bike tour becomes apparent.
Yes, we wanted to ride the complete trail, having done the Lower Hutt-Greytown leg a couple of years ago. Yes, we wanted to visit our Dear Friend. Yes, we could combine these two goals - and indeed complement them with a third one, me completing the Greytown parkrun.
I'm an avid parkrunner and can confirm that parkrun tourism is an actual thing. So whenever I see an opportunity to visit another part of NZ, or the-world-in-the-past-tense, I will seize it. (Last year, our itinerary involved a complicated combination of cycle paths and Swiss trains to get us from Zurich airport to a tiny French town so that I could mark my 100th parkrun in style. I wrote about it in CycleBlaze here)
This morning, I line up with 50-odd others on a Greytown rail trail to complete my 15th different NZ parkrun. I'm happy to achieve this goal but can report that my legs do not share my enthusiasm. Oh well. Coffee and lunch follow and a plan for the afternoon evolves.
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It's a windy day and my legs are still reluctant. We need to get back to Featherston to rejoin the trail but we don't need to bike there. Greytown and the other south Wairarapa towns are a fair distance and a big hill away from metropolitan Wellington but they are included in its urban transport network. So, at 1.07 pm, a bus will stop at the end of Dear Friend's street. It will have a bike carrier mounted on its front. We will ride in style to Featherston. We will have more coffee.
From Featherston the trail route heads straight down to the coast, all on sealed roads. The wind is coming from behind our right shoulders but is building in intensity and swirling unpredictably, at times helping, at times hindering progress. Our speed ranges between 10 - 30 km/ hour, depending on the wind's direction and velocity, and more than once we are pushed off the road by powerful gusts. It's an exhilarating ride but nonetheless we are happy to reach our destination, Te Rakau cabins, two old railway carriages converted into a self-contained unit.
As night closes in, we are safe in our solidly-built units. However the wind is due to change to the south and the met service has issued a warning of 4.5 metre swells predicted to strike the south coast in the next 24 hours.
There is no guarantee that we will be biking tomorrow.
Today's ride: 36 km (22 miles)
Total: 133 km (83 miles)
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