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Done & dusted


A week or more ago I might have been feeling a little smug, if I’m honest, about the the good luck we had had with the weather since Wanganui. We could see through the various channels that other riders were battling some horrible stuff in St Arnauds and on the coast a in the days before we arrived on part of the journey.  We weren’t unsympathetic of coarse, just glad that, as we travelled through, we seemed to be avoiding the badness.  We encountered a medical issue and delay at one point which got resolved, but weather didn’t seem to be a problem.  Part of me entertained the possibility we might get all the way down the coast and across to Bluff without getting wet.

Dumb, I know.  Not just because of the place, but also the time.  The West Coast is notorious for rain and in this day and age weather in New Zealand and the world is a bit mental. Soon enough the forecasts were out for not one, but two wet and potentially stormy fronts coming through.  We became fixated on all the weather apps and sites again - MetService, MetVUW, RuralWeather, etc. We soon estimated we’d get our comeuppance for our smugness in our last few days according to our estimates and we were right.

Haast was the first spot.  There we had to wait a day for a storm to pass.  We got through Haast Pass pretty dry and then also over the Crown Range to Queenstown.  the second front hit the south of the South Island about then.  Our second to last day we got pretty wet from Walter Peak to Mossburn, but a crazy tail wind made up for it.  On the last day we earned our weather fighting metal.

Sort of.

There was no extreme weather to be honest. And we only got wet in the morning.  But from about midday on, the head winds were strong and at times dangerous and made for a hard slog.

But what a reward for our efforts it was at the end of the day arriving at Bluff.  The slow progress meant we arrived pretty late which was a bit of a shame.  That meant the cafe and many other things were closed and Stirling Point was pretty quiet.  But against the backdrop of crashing waves, descending sun and New Zealand’s southernmost town closing down for the night we touched a pole at our destination and took the photo above that will always be special.







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