It's been a while...

 ...and probably too long...

But, on Saturday it finally happened!  Yes, believe it or not the poor old Connie (resting on brand new, zero km rubber) was wheeled out of the shed for a little pootle.

Following a short trip to and from the local servo the bike was parked up for a while to await the BMW rider and his pillion for the day, Suzanne.

After the obligatory coffee, we mounted up and made our way up the valley.  A cooler morning was slowly warming up to be a really nice, still and sunny day - it really made the views across the valley look pretty damn good.  Must be why it's called the Manawatu Scenic Route...

Suzanne works with Colin and Adi so naturally we had to take some caution across Adi's bridge and then stop to check out the ice...One day we'll stop giving him grief about his little whoopsie, one day.

Pretty girl

More great scenery and fun road got us out onto SH1 and the now fairly normal stop in Mangaweka for coffee and err, pies before a quiet trundle down the road to Hunterville.

Here the plan was to take back roads through to Marton but I thought that seeing we had a guest we should also pop out to the waterfall on Turakina Valley Road.  So we did.

Same pretty bike with pretty background

Back-tracking a little (and avoiding a wee bit of gravel) we were soon back on our way towards Marton.  I managed to take out a magpie along the way but Colin left the peacocks alone.

The neat little climb up Makuhou Road was once again neat, although autumn leaves across the road did slow us down a wee bit.  We slowed down even more at the top of the hill to make sure that the reservoir was still there.  It was, but I failed to get photographic evidence...

Beauty and the beast...

From there, we were soon in Marton where we paused for refreshments and a yarn before trundling off back to Ashhurst via Halcombe, Feilding and Colyton.

Superb day to be out riding and I'm pretty sure that the old girl enjoyed herself.  She's probably about five minutes away from hitting 165,000km and still an awesome machine.