Tuesday started fairly leisurely for us. After leaving the motel we fuelled up the bikes and then crossed the road to Nana Ni's for a hot meat filled pastry product.
Worms satiated, it was on the bikes and East to Spring Creek before our first little taste of gravel on the Western side of the Maruia River so that we could visit an old friend from a previous TT.
Popping back out onto the seal for a wee while, we rode North towards Murchison before turning off to the East to take in the Maruia Saddle. This is a neat, if a bit slow (except for the great gravel into Murch after crossing the saddle) ride through some nice bush with just a few small fords to cross.
On this day it was also a lot busier than last time with a group of 4WD's and some cyclists coming the other way.
Once off the saddle the road opens out a lot more and a very nice pace can be set. It was fairly dusty though and I had to let Colin get quite a fair way ahead of to keep out of his dust.
In Murchison it was time for another wee stop to check out a cafe and its inhabitants.
Leaving Murch, we were soon off the main road again and in search of gravel. The Braeburn Track provided this and after a pretty quick trip across it we were soon lakefront at Lake Rotoroa and sandfly heaven.
And it was time to break out the new toy.
It got a bit hard to concentrate on flying the thing towards the end as I was getting eaten alive...
Leaving the lake, we made our way back to the main road and then down to St Arnaud for fuel and an unpleasant discovery.
Somewhere after Reefton (possibly on the Braeburn) the steering stem nut on the S10 had disappeared! To say that it gave me a scare is an understatement - I thought the ride was all over. Luckily I had a Colin with me and even luckier the servo had some Knead It on the shelf. Colin sorted out the repair and we decided to ride up the road a little to see if it would hold - plans of crossing The Rainbow going on hold for a bit.
We rode up to the Rainbow turn-off and all seemed well, so we started on the first part of the Rainbow to the Doc gate where you hand over ya access money, crossing a few streams along the way and determined that the repair was handling it so handed over our cash and carried on.
Feeling a little better about the repair (but still attempting to avoid the worst of the bumps) we carried on and got stuck into enjoying a superb ride.
We even stopped to try out the follow-me feature of the drone...and failed miserably...
Further up the road we turned off the Rainbow to go and check out Lake Tennyson.
Back onto the Rainbow, we were onto some faster gravel and enjoyed a nice run through to Hanmer where it was time for a pretty late lunch and to search for some accomodation somewhere down the road.
We eventually booked some in Rangiora and had a pretty sedate cruise down there followed by a nice chat with a couple of (bike riders not on their bike) lawyers staying at the same motel. A great day on the bikes taking in some great gravel and outstanding scenery!
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