Apihara
The ride starts at Cape Regina, about a 5km very hilly ride from the campsite. Cape Regina is the Northernmost point of NZ and has a fantastic old lighthouse, it would not look out of place in those photos with the huge waves smashing over the structure.
From there it is only about 20 km to 100 Mile Beach. It is not really 100 miles, more like 80km, but it feels like 100 miles! The beach is long and straight, cycling on sand, even hard sand, is a little bit like glue. There was no headwind which made it a little easier. I hadn’t brought and easy to eat food and there was nowhere really to stop and cook lunch. About 15km from the end, in the only joining town, someone was selling ice creams, coffee and cold drinks. That ice cream was heaven.
The beach finishes at a very pretty town called Apihara with a good holiday park, in which most of us were staying. Luckily the park also provides a bike cleaning area, as we all know, sand gets everywhere! (I later heard from a bike shop that, before the bike wash was there, every bike needed the drive train completely replaced by Auckland.)
The night was a very welcome hot shower and dinner, it was very enjoyable getting to know other riders doing the event. One of the first people I spoke to lives about 2 suburbs from me in Brisbane and goes to the same bike shop!
Apihara is in a farming area, maybe a few dozen students, mostly Chinese, were staying in the campground while picking fruit and veggies. The farmers let people take some vegetables home and they were cooking them up as Chinese-style hotpots, the smells were amazing. My, quite nice, freeze-dried meal seemed really boring.
What a great way to start the ride.
Images
Past the God in the Forrest to Kauri Holiday Park
The feature of the day was hills; many, many, serious hills. The day was only 150km but had over 2500 m of climbing, much of it at 11,12 or 13% gradient. It was hard. New Zealand gave us everything today – heat, rain, stunning beaches, beautiful forests and huge Kauri trees.
Today was the first ferry of the ride, New Zealand has a LOT of rivers, which means a lot of boats. The ferry gave another benefit, a bit of time to get to know some of the other riders. I have a feeling boats like this will be feature of days to come.
Easy way over water
I don’t think I have described how this brevet works; there is a very long GPX file with the recommended route and some alternatives, mostly for the very technical ride, flooding related weather issues, bridge/track maintenance or whatever needs some alternatives. In order to get on the register for having ‘completed’ the course there is 20 checkpoints to take photos and upload.
Tane Mahuta
One of the checkpoints was a huge Kauri tree, Tane Mahuta, God of the Forrest, one of New Zealand’s biggest trees and the largest Kauri Tree and is 1,250 and 2,500 years old. It is named after Tāne, the Māori god of forests and of birds. Unfortunately we arived about 5 minutes after the closing time, the gate was unclimbable and hung out into mid air on both the left and right – there was no sneaking into this one after hours. A photo of the gate would have to do. The area has lots of these trees around, they are enormous and a real taste of what New Zealand forest once looked like.
The Map
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