BRRBT Inaugural Ride

And now for something completely different...

A wee while ago Neil had the cunning thought that the BRR should run some road rides as quite a few of the gravel nuts also have road bikes and its another good excuse for a pootle.  And so Back Road Riders Black Top rides were born -with today being our first outing.

After another very crap Saturday (Neil rode down from National Park in the snow) Sunday started off fairly promising with no rain and the sun at least trying to burn off the cloud.  I was up early again and soon on my way over to the meeting point in Feilding.  Here's a great pic of the Connie with all the other guys there waiting for the action to start:

Anyway, after I'd had a coffee the others started turning up and soon there was a reasonable smattering of bikes and riders.  Because this was a Black Top ride there were also a few new faces (who obviously haven't discovered the joys of gravel riding) and we were even lucky enough to have a couple of new Yamahas from the local shop along for the ride.

Eventually we'd spent enough time making fun of the Triumph riders so geared up and hit the road.  Feilding was looking pretty good in the sun:

Leaving Feilding we rode across to Colyton before using Valley Road to get us across to the Pohangina Valley.

Next up was Pohangina Valley East Road to Apiti where it was time for a quick stop and a chance to check out all the other bikes.

Bug-eyed monsters

A gixxer with nearly as many kms on it as the Connie

Wee parked by a magnificent Kwaka

Colin's Wee

Russell's nice little Guzzi

Yamaha MT-07

Star of the show - MT-09

We had to leave Apiti twice as not far out of the village Neville's Triumph decided to pick up a puncture.  This was fixed fairly quickly and we were off again dodging cattle and pigeon's (Neil).

At the turn-off to Rangiwahia we lost both Yamahas as one had places to be and the other needed to go off and search for fuel before rejoining us further up the road.

Anything in there?

While the Yamahas went left, we went right and enjoyed a great ride through to Pemberton where we turned off and made for Ohingaiti.  More great roads.

From Ohingaiti we took another couple of short back roads through to out lunch stop in Hunterville.

Our after lunch we lost a few of the Wellington riders and made for Fordell via some nifty back roads before taking in a few more loops that would eventually have us back in Feilding.  It was during these loops that most of the guys had the opportunity to try out the lovely little MT-09 - myself included.

Kauangaroa Road

My little spin on it was from Turakina, up Turakina Valley Road and then onto Makuhou Road.  The first bit was on fairly straight roads but Makuhou Road is made of corners and even though there was plenty of metal spread across the road I had a ball on the lightweight ball of fun - cheers Barry!

After a blat around Mt Curl we even took in a short stretch of gravel (well I guess we did have a couple of Wee-Stroms with us, had to keep them happy) before swapping over to the other side of SH1 for another little loop.  Our ride pretty much ended in Halcombe where everyone went their separate ways and I popped in to see the folks in Feilding.  A great start to the BRRBT rides!

More pics here.