Hmm, only a couple of jobs today, so was all finished by about 9.30am……….

We had a quick chat and decided to go for a bike ride, mine and Louise’s, over the Rimutaka to Palliser Bay.

The Putangirua Pinnacles near Palliser were the location for the Lord of the Rings “Paths of the Dead”. We’d often talked about going there, but Ian Brodie’s LOTR guide book mentioned a 2-3 hour return walk from the road, and we’d not really had the time before.

Louise’s trip over the Rimutaka wasn’t too bad, although the winds were a little bad.

We got down to Putangirua car park (a gravel track to a camping spot) after stopping off to pick up some lunch at a roadside store. We stripped off the helmets and bike jackets and stored them in the top box on my bike, grabbed the lunchbag and off we went.

WOW!!

The entrance to the pinnacles was meant to be a gentle tromp of about 40 mins – to quote the local beer advert again ” Yeah, right”! That’ll be that Kiwi understatement bit again….

It did only take about 50 mins, it was fairly gentle, in a rocky stream bed sort of way….

Mentioning no names, but one of us didn’t quite make it all the way to the top….and I was carrying the camera….

If you look really closely at the last picture, you can almost make out someone having a rest while I took a photo from the top of the valley – OOPS, that means it wasn’t me….

Afternoon tea on the Paths of the Dead! Cool!

The trip back wasn’t quite so good. The wind was REALLY high on the Rimutaka.

As I rode in front around a particularly blustery LH corner, a high gust lifted the front of my bike off the road. Luckily, I’ve been riding for a while, so I leaned forward and hard over to the left and got around no problem.

I pulled straight over and stopped the bike to warn Louise (I’d already been flashing my brake lights for a while). Unfortunately, the gust blew Louise’s bike to the other side of the road. I was already slowing traffic down, so she wasn’t in danger and managed to pull over to the side of the road by the fence as the traffic went past. As soon as it was clear, she pulled back over and we continued to the top for a well-earned rest stop and relax!

At least the rest of the trip was uneventful….