Lovely day today, so we thought we’d have an outing on the bike up to Otaki – just about 30 mins away.

A lovely trip up the coast and 25 mins later we stopped for a coffee at a mobile coffee wagon that didn’t seem very mobile at all – it was plumbed in to the local services for water, electricity and gas! There was a family resting up that came over on the ferry from South Island today – they had a “bit” of bad weather on the way. They also bought some food which smelt gorgeous – however, steak for tea so we were very good and stuck with a coffee and a free marshmallow!

We were going to just go back down the coast, but as we left Otaki I thought I’d see what was up towards the Tararua range. Apart from the Otaki racecourse, the answer is …. nothing. The road just ended at a farm. I thought it would, but no harm in chacking!

I rode back through Otaki and thought I’d have a look at the Otaki Gorge on the south side. As expected, the road changed into an unsealed (for unsealed, read gravel) one and as I’d only just started back on the bike I decided not to throw caution to the wind just yet and we turned around after a short trek. The gorge looked lovely on the way up and we will be going back to go up further to the Otaki Fords – I’m pretty sure the hobbits were filmed up there making their way out of Hobbiton and the Shire!

The first picture below is from Google, and you can just about see the gravel track winding away into the distance above the river on the right hand side of the river. The picture is taken from the suspension bridge across the river, which we went over after turning back from the gravel track.

We did go across the bridge (yes, it is a single lane bridge!) to the other side of the river but quickly ran into a christian retreat come adventure park – adventure seemed to be restricted to “walking by the river”, “chasing the unsaddled horse in the paddock” and that all-time favourite “find the longest blade of grass”! So the 2nd picture is from the christian “retreat” side of the bridge looking over to the gravel track disappearing off to the left.

We gave up exploring for the afternoon/evening and headed back for Paraparam for a well-earned drinkie-poohs and a couple of tuna sandwiches out on the veranda. Which is great now that I’ve followed Phil Buller’s example in Australia and sprayed the patio door area with Mortein – a sort of armageddon/ragnarok for flying beasties that hangs around on surfaces and in crevasses convincing said flying beasties to either stay away, or die if they stay too long!

For those of you that are sharp-eyed and wondering what happened to the promised steak – we couldn’t be bothered, even to cook a steak, we were tired, so we left it in the fridge and had some tuna with salad sandwiches instead.