BRRBT Navigator's Delight

Yesterday was our monthly Blacktop ride and while Saturday was a beautiful day the news was full of wind warnings for Sunday.  Things were supposed to be pretty bad down South with it hitting us later in the day.  It did get pretty exciting down South too...

I left home completely oblivious to the hazards of mobile water tanks but concerned about the darkish sky and ominous clouds.  I also left home on the Vee rather than my usual blacktop weapon, letting the Connie rest up a little for next weekend...

In Feilding most of the guys were already there when I arrived so we hit the road just after 9 and headed out to Halcombe.  After grinding some metal off the Vee's main-stand on the Halcombe Road we rode on to Marton.

Makuhou Road is always a fun little squirt and it was a little bit more exciting this time around with plenty of gravel and dirt spread across the road courtesy of the recent bad weather and slips.  Three adv bikes got through pretty easily and the rest managed to dodge the marbles well enough too.

North of Wanganui we turned off to the left on a new to me road (Rapanui Road) which took us on a nice little tiki-tour to Kai Iwi where we stopped off to check out the beach.

Some of the BRRBT regulars

Mark's new Beemer

Lovely weather to the South...

...and the North

After about ten minutes we'd had our fill of standing around in the wind and decided to carry on riding in it.  We made our way back out to the main road and onto Waitotara.  Here we headed inland a bit and got to check out the flood damage up the valley.  Man, the place has been hammered - many paddocks were still completely covered in silt and the roads had plenty of mess over them too.

Our loop eventually got us back out on SH3 again for the trip back towards Wanganui.  But another loop inland on more storm damaged roads kept us out of the traffic and we got to have a little play on some nice tight twisties before popping us back out onto the main road again.

Back in Wanganui it was time for lunch and to water the horses.  Mark and Rob snobbed us, pretending they had better things to do, so it was just seven of us left for the short afternoon loop.

Our afternoon started with a trip over to Fordell and then along Wanganui road to take us back into Marton again.  Riding out of Marton a little voice in my head (actually a loud Neil over the intercom) was questioning as to why we were riding on the same road for the second time in one day...as I'd said earlier, I was just following the route in my GPS set about a month ago and long forgotten...

Instead of riding Makuhou Road again, we turned in the opposite direction to make for the dreaded SH1.  We stayed on it for about 400m before taking another turn that took us down close to the Rangitikei River before looping back up to SH1.

Another couple of km of SH1 had us turning onto the Halcombe Road, again...

But the next loop along Pryces Line and Makino Road took us on another loop that avoided Halcombe before spitting us out back in Feilding - and that was about it for the ride.  After coffee in Feilding we all split up and headed off on our separate ways home - all without seeing a single water tank on the road!

More pics here.