Coast to coast

Today was one of those days that really surprised me. I wasn’t looking forward to the ride out of Auckland at all, and peering out of my window in the morning and seeing a mass of traffic, I feared for the worst. It was, however, an extremely pleasant ride.

It kicked off with a cheeky little ascent of Mount Eden – an extinct volcano with a small but extremely marked crater that has views across the city. It was an unnecessary trip if my aim was to get to Bluff as quickly as possible, but that isn’t the intention, and the views of Auckland were brilliant.

I then rode across some lovely parks, along a cool cycle bridge and through some pretty suburbs. I even found myself on a mountain bike trail just on the edge of town to the east of Auckland airport before jumping back onto “sealed roads” that would take me to the opposite coast.

Sealed roads here tend to mean not gravel, which is somewhat unfortunate if you’re spending north of 6h a day in the saddle. I long for smooth asphalt but the approach here seems to be to just chuck some stones down on some tar and see what sticks. Luckily oyster farms, cockle beaches, turquoise waters, the odd hill and an incredible coastal route to finish it off with mostly kept me distracted from my now tender ass.

Somewhat amusingly, tomorrow is supposed to be either 59 or 80km of gravel and 2km of road, which I’m actually very much looking forward to but isn’t going to help my ass cheeks. I quite fancy pushing to 80 or even 115km tomorrow but I just don’t know how I’m going to get on with non sealed roads, so I’m leaving things very open. At 80km though there are some hot springs which they conveniently have at the holiday park I’m currently staying in.

Kia ora!