Wandering around Whanganui

This weekend was another Adv ride planned by Phreaky Phil and it was nice to see that after a week of rain (nice for a change) he had included a fine day in his plans.  The ride was planned out of Whanganui and guys and girls rocked in from all over the North Island to take in some mint back roads.

After an early rise and walk of the dog I hit the road at about 7:15 to ride over to Whanganui for the meet.  For a while it was just me and a couple of Tiggers but eventually the rest of the team turned up and I forgot to take a photo...

Once Phil had given us the run down on the ride we saddled up and headed out along the river before turning up Brunswick Road to make our way out of Whanganui.  I got the job as first cornerman which meant that I got to follow the team through to the start of the fantastic Rangitatau East Road.  As you can see we had a fair selection of bikes and some good keen pillions too.

After our first taste of Rangitatau East Road, we stopped at what was our planned turn-off down Kauarapaoa Road for a regroup.

A Stephen

The Tigger twins

Phil decided that we had made good time so we decided to explore more of Rangitatau East Road and ended up riding in as far as the Private Road sign - legend has it that it pays not to ignore the sign...

I'm guessing that somewhere along this bit Dawn got this great shot of a critter trying to race a boxer.

Officially trespassing...

You can see from the video below that the road changes from a nice wide road for the logging trucks to a narrow track where you can just about hear the banjos...

Alan checking his shoelaces are tied...

Stephen #1 again

Stephen #2 (TEC)

After a quick catch-up we retraced our steps and made our way back to the turn-off to Kauarapaoa Road and plunged down the hill back towards Whanganui.  This is a fantastic ride and was in better nick than I'd expected - we've had a lot of rain!  As it it turned out the really muddy bits were closer to Whanganui but I believe that apart from one little bit of excitement, everyone got through upright and ok.

Back in Whanganui we stopped briefly for fuel before making our way to the Cafe at Upokongaro for lunch and to pick up a couple more bikes for the afternoon's ride.

After lunch we had a quick squirt up the Paras before turning off onto Te Rimu Road which I had not done in a few years and which everyone's GPS maps said does not go right through to Mangamahu Road - there's even a no exit sign at the start of the road.  But guess what?

At the end of the road Colin and I did the cornerman job and had quite a wait for the last 2 bikes.  Not sure what the delay was but naturally when I finally decided to go look see I ran into them within less than one kilometre.

Next up was a lengthy section of tar which let us catch up to some of the others before being forced to stop by a misbehaving Yamaha (never heard of one of those before).  It turned out that the battery terminal on the WR had come a bit loose and the bike was soon up and running and leaving marks in the gravel to show us the way.

As you can see from the end of the video we managed to find a bit of rain as we waited for all the gang at the Fields Track turn-off.

Just rain...

A bit of tar got us to the next gravel section on Owhakura Road which spat us out on the last (but one of my favourites) bit of gravel on Turakina Valley Road.  In places the gravel was deeper than we'd had elsewhere on the day so the Ten floated around a bit and I got cleaned up by that pesky KLR again...

The last stop for Colin and myself was at Papanui Junction where we said goodbye to the rest of the gang as we were going to head home rather than back to Whanganui for dinner with the troops (anti-social cretins that we are).  A few highlights from Turakina Valley Road:

After waving to the last cornerman, Colin and I had a nice squirt into Hunterville before rocking Vinegar Hill into Feilding where a coffee at the olds place was in order.

Another great ride!  Thanks Phil!