It seems a very long time since I last tapped away at a keyboard after a day on the bike, recording our travels and trying to make sense of the world.  A small explainer – I was fit and well in March last year as we left Vietnam and by January this year I could not walk more than 200m without huge difficulty.  It seems as if – for reasons that are entirely mysterious –  the arteries in my heart clogged up and I was getting less and less blood flow around the body including to my head.  The wonderful cardiology team at Wolverhampton sorted me out with a quadruple bypass in late January. 

Then it was a period of slow recovery, and gradually getting my fitness back.  By the summer I was back to walking and climbing mountains and a week ago we left for New Zealand to escape the UK winter and put my recovery to the test.  So that is why we found ourselves cycling mountain bikes along the Timber Trail in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand.

The Timber trail is an 84km long off-road cycle and walking route that was created by the NZ Department of Conservation and teams of volunteers between 2009 and 2013, when it was opened.  It is located in Pureora Forest Park and has 35 bridges along its route.  This is former logging country and the southern half of the trail follows a former tramway that was used to pull logs out of the forest called the Ellis and Burnand Tramway. 

We left our B & B early and met up at the end of the trail south of Ongarue where we picked up hire bikes.  Bernie’s brother had been kind enough to offer us their bikes but cycling around urban Wellington and cycling across the bush are wholly different and we decided to fork out for bikes that stood a better chance of withstanding the rigours of the trail.

A minibus took 4 of us from Ongarue to the start of the trail at Pureora.  The bus ambled through farmland with forest up on our right.  This is tough sheep and cattle country, as is so much of rural New Zealand.  It was overcast and rain threatened.  We had left the start of winter in the UK and it was spring here but definitely not yet summer. 

Our group included Anja from Holland, who was travelling on her own and a NZ man who was helping his brother and a friend who were walking the Te Araroa, the 3,012km walk from one end of Aotearoa New Zealand, to give the country its full name, to the other. 

Jackets on we started out on the trail – and that is what it was.  No roads here and just a meandering trail through the bush.  Tall podocarp trees flanked the trail with birds calling out to warn others of our presence, or maybe just calling out because they can.  There were occasional signs that is was an area of forest operations.  The peak of forestry was between the second world war and the 1990s, delivering timber to build houses throughout the country’s post war economic development. 

We were not alone on the trail, but it was never crowded.  Occasional groups of ebikers would (of course) pass us as they glided (seemingly) effortlessly along.  Most appeared to be NZ nationals but there were the inevitable Dutch riders.  Wherever we go in the world we meet Dutch cyclists.  The combination of cycling and travelling seems part of their national psyche.

This route is well marked and we were only aiming to do 39km on the first day.  But mountain biking is not like road cycling, there is far more rolling resistance, especially in the mud, and the trail went up to 917m at its highest point.  We reached the high point after 14km, and had the pleasure of cycling across the 115m wide Bog Creek suspension bridge, with its spectacular views over the forest below.

The track merged into an old logging road and gradually descended, but with some more steep climbs.  By this point we had got used to the foibles of the bikes and Bernie’s confidence was growing.  The bush was dense throughout the day and the overcast weather limited the views.  There were numerous signboards along the way pointing out local fauna, flora or explaining how the forest operated as a working forest. The boards were clearly put up when the trail was new and, of course, the forest changes and develops all the time.  That meant that some of the “views” were obscured by vegetation but that is a good thing as it shows the forest recovering from being plundered.

 Eventually we reached the end point of the day, Piropiro.  There is a lodge here where most trail riders were staying but we had elected to camp.  Part of the transport service we signed up to dropped our rucksacks at the Lodge and so we stored the bikes and walked the 500m down to the “campsite”.  This was a field with a pit toilet and access to river water.  The Lodge was not built until several years after the trail opened and so, at that stage, camping was the only option.  Now an expensive night awaits those who prefer not  to spend the night under canvass; which we discovered was almost everyone apart from us.  There was a second “glamping” option at Epic Campsite but we wanted to test out our camping gear before going on a 4 day trek and so opted for the basic campsite.

We got the tent up in the dry and then the heavens opened.  Sitting inside the tent with hail hitting the roof, we wondered about the wisdom of our choice but it was all fine when the storm abated.  We ambled up to the Lodge for a beer after a home cooked supper, but found that they could only sell alcohol to residents!  Ginger beer in front of  log fire was an excellent alternative. The residents – many of whom we had exchanged greetings with on the trail were just finishing their evening meal.  We fell in to chatting with a South African couple who were finding the trail hard, even on ebikes.  They expressed “surprise” we were camping and, a few minutes later the woman turned to us and said in a conspiratorial whisper that if her husband ever asked her to do what we were doing, she had told him that he would need to find a new wife!  It was unclear whether he took this as a threat or an opportunity.

The Lodge staff were really friendly even though we were not staying there, and they even offered us some left over apple crumble; and then, as we were leaving, the cook pressed us to take more apple crumble. Over catering has its benefits.   That turned into a marvellous breakfast but, for that detail, you will have to read on to tomorrow.