Sunday, July 26, 2015

Flipping a few stones

Having not had the chance for a decent ride in the past few weeks today I decided to remedy that by getting out for a short ride on the mighty Vee.

I decided to take a trip out around the Pohangina Valley but to take a few roads I hadn't taken in a while.  It was also going to be interesting to see what the roads were like after some nasty weather a few weeks ago.

I cruised across town and out through Kelvin Grove before finally hooking up with my first bit of gravel on Watershed Road.  It had been a few weeks since I was last on gravel so it took me a while to get comfortable on it again - some of the gravel had had a grader over it recently so this always adds to the fun.

Soon I was on the familiar Zig Zag road but rather than carrying onto Ridge Road I instead took Finnis Road down into the Pohangina township.

Gravel!

Finnis Road

Dropping down the hill into Pohangina
Next up was some fast gravel on Pohangina Road to Makoura.  I had a blast along here as I'd got the hang of the slippery stuff and had the tail hanging out a bit on a couple of the great uphill turns - oops!

Pohangina Road
Up  on top of the ridge things got a bit slower but the scenery got better so I pulled up for a quick photo stop.






At Utuwai I hung a left to make for Apiti.  After dropping down to the river and clambering back up the other side the road straightens out and is a real hoot on a big dual-purpose bike - you can guess why.




The gravel finally ran out in Apiti so I settled into a fast cruise back to Cheltenham where I stopped for some bacon & eggs wrapped in pastry before carrying on to the old's place for a coffee.



I was finally back home around 2 in plenty of time to give the mower a bit of a thrashing too.  The bike and I both enjoyed our little potter!


More pics here.

6 comments:

  1. I must have missed my invite...?

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  2. Fun! Glad you got out for a bit. The clouds were starting to look ominous though.

    We were supposed to go for an overnight ride last weekend but as we were loading the bikes Saturday morning, hubby got a call and had to cover teaching a motorcycle safety class. Another teacher had broken ribs and couldn't do it. Oh well, one of these weekends.

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    1. Show him where the off button is on the phone...

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  3. That looks like some choice gravel good sir. The strom would have lapped that up and went back for seconds.

    Bacon & eggs wrapped in pastry, what is this new delite you speak of and how come i've not heard of it before?

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    1. Surely you had a B&E pie while you were over here?

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