Rail Trail Adventure

Wide open spaces, landscapes, moonscapes, old country pubs, rustic decaying buildings. All are encountered on the Otago Central Rail Trail which I just completed with my uncle Phil. It is a 157km bike trip following the path of the former Central Otago branch railway line which closed for good in 1990. It took a number of years to complete the transition to rail trail, with the rails being ripped out and surface smoothed for biking. The last stretch of rail trail finally completing the connection from Middlemarch to Clyde opened in 2000. It took us 3 days to bike the trail in its entirity.

'Please remain on the train, do not get off the train, please remain on the train.'

We opted to get to Middlemarch by the Taieri Gorge Railway. It is an old fashioned train that runs daily as a scenic tourist excursion from Dunedin to Middlemarch, where the rail ends and the trail begins. It was a slow journey through stunning scenery, covering only about 50km in two hours. It would have been quite an enjoyable train ride were it not for the annoying announcer who repeated himself about 5 times everytime he wanted to say something. "We are now making a short operational stop, please remain on the train, do not get off the train". "Please step backwards off the train when disembarking, backwards like a ladder". To numb us from his annoying tonal bombardment, we turned to the only thing we could do in a situation like that in Central Otago and had a couple of cans of Speights each.

Some People Enjoy It, God Hates The Shit

Speaking of Speights, another member of the Taieri Gorge Railway's staff was quite fun. He was an older guy who acted as the train's gaurd. When people failed to disembark backwards and were snapped jumping forwards out of the door, it was his job to go up and threaten them with a $5000 fine for such stupidity. He walked through the train telling war stories and joking with the passengers but he didn't like to take no for an answer when he was selling souvineers. When he saw we had discovered the train's galley and liberated some amber gold, it was he who educated us as to what Speights stood for: Some People Enjoy It, God Hates The Shit.

Just another quiet night in Middlemarch

Arriving in Middlemarch late afternoon gave us a chance to get our bearings and cover off some last minute preperation before the sun went down. I assembled my bike after it had been broken down and bagged up for the flight to Dunedin. Before long though, the sun was setting and the air got cooler, and it was time to make our way to the local establishment. We would need to indulge in some carbo-loading, which should be handled by a decent meal of steak and fries, accomanied by a Speights or two.

Shock-horror, after a couple of brews at the pub (a Speights, followed by a sampling of Matson's Rail Trail Ale, which by the way is crap) it was discovered that the pub's chef was having the night off. Apparently monday's aren't usually busy with rail-trailers. We mulled over what to do about dinner with another brew and then joined the migration of fellow rail-trailers around the corner to the one cafe that was serving dinner in town and had a good meal there. Not a late night, we would be up early and starting the trail the next day.

61km to Ranfurly

We set out motivated for the longest leg of our journey. Best to get it out of the way on the first day, I thought. I had planned the leg from Middlemarch to Ranfurly to be 56km, but after we had ridden about 12km already we reached a DoC sign that said Ranfurly was still 56km away. This would put the day's leg at closer to 70km, a hard ask for a couple of cyclists who could perhaps generously be called intermediate. We pushed on. As it turned out, the sign was wrong and my measurement was a few km out. When we finally made it to Ranfurly we had cycled 61km into a chilly slight headwind, uphill.

At one stage we seemed to be making such slow progress (the odometer and speedometer can be quite demoralizing on a ride like this) that I questioned why we were even doing this. When we reached Hyde (only about half way through this leg) we stopped and had a beer in front of the fire before carrying on. Leaving Hyde, the trail goes through some unfenced farmland and we were contending with wandering stock. Slightly dilerious, I found myself talking to the sheep and cows, sometimes in my language, sometimes in their language, and sometimes in a weird fusion of english and cow, like 'goodaftermoo'.

The Waipiata Man

As the torture continued we made another stop at the Waipiata Hotel, still some 10km out of Ranfurly. The vat wasn't turned on as we were the first, and possibly only customers for the day so we had a toasted sandwich and a speights each before continuing on our way.

Another fire, another beer.

Art Deco Ranfurly

Finally, absolutely pooped, we arrived at Ranfurly station and walked our bikes across the road to our accommodations at the Old Po's backpackers. We had the whole joint to ourselves. The visitors book yeilded helpful comments like "You might like to throw out your toaster, since it doesn't work," left by Hans Itler, of Germany.

Day 2 - Up the castrated male sheep creek without a paddle

Early on the second day we as we approached the morale-boosting highest point of the trail, we passed a station called Wedderburn. The guidebook kindly points out that Wedder is a castrated male sheep, and burn is a waterway.

The Highest Point

The highest point on the trail is 618 metres above sea level. It also crosses the lattitude 45 south line.

Not much traffic in these parts

This is Oturehua, a picturesque little town with a general store and a pub. Phil is having a beer while I catch some rest in the middle of the main road.

In the Ida Valley and the Poolburn Gorge

In the Ida Valley we ran into this farmer and his dogs. We talked to the farmer for a while about farming next to the rail trail, while one of his dogs rolled around in shit in the grass. Incase anyone asks, he was not riding motorized transportation on the rail trail. That quad bike is in fact pedal powered. He told us he had been to a rail trail operators meeting (he runs a small B&B) the previous day where DoC raised concerns about signage along the trail. This issue was all the talk among people who work the trail. Accomodation providers and other service providers put up little signs along the trail, mostly they are more informative than advertising, for example 'Backpackers 100m that way'. I don't know what we would have done without them. Sometimes they were very motivating, telling us how long we had to ride to the next pub. But DoC is concerned about the commercialization of the trail. This farmer told DoC. He said if they made him take down his small sign on the trail side of the fence, he'd erect a huge highway style billboard on his side of the fence just to piss them off.

Omadeer, it's Omakau!

After 56km of riding on the second day we reached Omakau and checked into the commercial hotel there. This hotel is famous for being the setting of the old Speights ad where Mrs McKinnon makes her venison meat pie. While its not the main pub at the hotel, the publican was kind enough to open up the old McKinnon's pub, built in 1870, and show us around.

The Great Fire of Omakau

Phil and I had retired to the house bar following the tough ride to Omakau and perched ourselves at a table near the woodburner. Said woodburner was getting a bit low on fuel and we were getting a little cold in our shorts and t-shirts, so Phil moved to stoke up the fire. As he did this, the neighboring table stirred, occupied by 6 or 7 local farmers all wearing their thick woolen jerseys, drinking more jugs of beer then I ever imagined was humanly possible, and harboring a bit of resentment for intruders like rail-trailers. A rough-as-guts old man barked at Phil after he stoked up the fire "You warm enough?!" Shortly after we moved to another table, away from the fire, at which point one of the farmers was observed to say "Cunt put another log on the fire, and then they fucked off."

As the night wore on the tension grew almost too much to bare, and Phil moved to call a ceasefire and befriend the locals. And it worked. Before long we were talking like old friends and they were asking our ideas on ways they could financially flease the rail-trailers who passed by their farms.

The final stretch

On the 3rd day we set out for Clyde, leaving Omakau behind. We had 37km to ride today, a much more modest distance than we were used to but it proved far from easy. Just after Omakau it got frosty and cold, so we stopped at Chatto Creek at 10am for a warming whiskey at the pub there. We had met the Chatto Creek publican on the trail in Lauder the day before, and he had said that if his pub wasn't open at the time we went passed we were to knock on the door and he'd open up. He was true to his word, and we enjoyed the whiskey before continuing on our way.

We made it!

The final stretch turned out a lot more difficult than we had imagined, but we made it! I got a slow leaking puncture with 1km to go, the air in the tire lasted just long enough to get me to the end.