Waitangi Wanderings

Public holidays are great...

Last night Neil gave me a ring to see what I was up to today and see if I wanted to meet him and Neville somewhere as they were coming South and Nev was astride his new 1190.  The excuse jar was empty so I decided to meet them in Hunterville for a coffee.

A further call this morning had Neil estimating a Hunterville ETA of around 11:30 so I got my act together and left home around 10:30 to go meet them.  While it had been fine in Palmy, as I started up over Vinegar Hill there was the odd spit of rain and the road was a bit damp in places.  I still made good time to Hunterville and arrived there ahead of the others so gassed up the bike and headed up the Turakina Valley to meet the adv riders who were playing in the gravel.

Not knowing where I would come across the lads, I decided that if I didn't meet up with them by the time I got to the waterfall, I would stop there and wait - not long after the falls the road goes to gravel and the Connie was dirty enough without tackling any mud (the Vee is awaiting some TLC before it heads out onto the gravel again).  I ended up getting to the falls about 5 minutes or so before the others.  (Phone pics today).

Neil the first around the corner but right behind him was a 400km old 1190R with a very happy owner aboard.

Dirty already Nev!

The 1190 certainly looks the biz with all the extra fruit Nev has added and when we took off (after pairing 3 intercoms) I could even hear it making nice V-twin noises in my helmet.

A short 20 or so km on drying roads got us back to Hunterville where we took over the cafe again and talked bikes, intercoms, crashes, whipped cream etc...

Nice parking by the cage-driver...

After our coffee we headed South on SH1 and waved off Nev at the Halcombe turn-off as he was heading home while Neil and I collected Colin and then road onto Palmy.

Another nice little ride that sure bet going to work and still two more days off before another Monday arrives...

More pics here.  Map here.