Curing the lock-down blues

Been cramped inside under lock-down with kids running a muck? Feel like you’re an extra in the new edition of Groundhog Day? What is the best medicine for some lock-down blues? There’s one surefire answer – it’s a bike trip – YEEHAA!!

With crazy times like this around the world, don’t you feel like it’s really been reinforced how important, and how much of a privilege, it is to be able to get out of your house, and out of your town? What a wonderful feeling to breathe the fresh air, to have the wind in your hair and the sun on your back and to get out and have a little bit of adventure in your life.

Steve and I had been cooped up in the NZ lock-down for somewhere close to 7 weeks – I know that might be short compared to some of you out there, so hang in there 🙂 – but for us it still felt like a long time. Our respective works had been brutal, crazy and full-on, with a good dose of manic childcare, and we were desperate for a short break away.

We decided quickly that the goal of this little overnighter was not to go hard and get muddy or wet or push the challenge as hard as we could, like the last couple of adventures. Instead our aim was to take it more leisurely and focus on the relaxing and meditative side of adventuring. With that in mind we aimed to recreate, at least in part, a previous trip Steve had done down through the Catlins.

If you don’t know, the Catlins is a fabulous piece of coastline and forest that stretches around the South-East corner of the South Island, and is a somewhat forgotten or at least under-appreciated part of New Zealand. We were looking for cruisy back country roads, a sweet camp by the beach, and a fire with some whisky. And this little jaunt in delivered in spades!!

We headed off late on Friday afternoon, as respective works took their final chunk for the week, and headed south. We spent about 3km on the main highway before heading over Scroggs Hill to Brighton, which was about 40% of the total main highway riding we’d end up doing on this trip. South of Brighton the road meanders along the beautiful coastline, between sandy beaches and dunes, and small rocky outcrops. The light was soft and stunning, and with the gentle curves, it became amazingly mesmerizing. Wow, what a way to head away from the city and immediately be in riding heaven 🙂 .

Then we hit the gravel, and after a few minutes of trying to remember how to ride on gravel we settled in. We wound our way through farm land, forestry and beautiful coastline before we hit the Clutha River; of interest did you know the Clutha is the highest volume and swiftest river in New Zealand. Thus, the only option from here is to head the 20km up the river to the closest bridge in Balclutha itself, and the famous old Balclutha Bridge. We were both a bit quiet through these early stages, just soaking up the meditative feeling that we’d been craving.

We topped up on supplies in Balclutha while the sun set, then headed off back to the coast and the Catlins itself. We knew we wanted beach, and that we didn’t want to ride too far in the dark so spied Sandy Bay and headed off the Owaka Highway and out towards Sandy Bay – or so we thought….we arrived at the coastline and the sign for Cannibal Bay, mmmmm do we really want to stay in a place called Cannibal Bay??

Our minds were quickly made up as we rode off the road towards the beach and it opened out into a perfect camping spot, with the silhouette of the beach, rocks and ocean crashing in the distance. This was our sign, we parked up and set up camp.

Once we had our tents up we went searching for some wood to start a fire, and were greeted by dead branches galore – this spot was made for us. Fire cranking, dinner cooking, whisky flowing – we’d certainly found a fantastic spot and exactly what we were looking for. We were a couple of happy boys and lounged the evening away enjoying the serenity and calmness of being out in the wilderness (just mind the cannibals 😉 ).

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Saturday morning dawned to a motorbike buzzing outside, and next thing I heard was an old dude chatting to Steve. In short, he was not that happy with us as this was a no camping and no fires spot. Ha, too late mate, hehehe!!

So we packed up our stuff and wondered what we should do with the morning. The old fella had headed off down the beach on his bike, so obviously we’d need to do the same – when faced with a wide open flat beach and a motorbike, what do you do?? The answer was clear!!

At the other end of the beach we came across a couple of sea lions. This is a pretty common sight in these parts and they are pretty innocuous while they lounge on the beach, until you get too close to them. So Steve, in his infinite wisdom, decided he wanted a photo of his bike as close to the sea lions as he could get. Which was ok, except for the big one rearing up as he got off his bike to leave it there for the photo. From there, he ran away and we got a few photos…….before his bike fell over! The side stand had sunk into the soft wet sand. I just stood there and laughed while Steve risked life and limb to pick his bike up and push it away from the very annoyed sea lions. In the end, no damage done, whew!!!

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After this interesting and slightly stressful encounter, we realised the old guy had never returned so looked at the track leaving the end of the beach in a different light. Steve knew this track from a previous trip here and knew it led to Surat Bay around the headland. Could we make it? There was only one way to find out…..

After a second go at getting up the very soft and very sandy track leaving the beach, I joined Steve in a loose and fun trip across the base of the headland towards Surat Bay. As we reached the high point the view in front of us just stretched out away from us – it was incredibly beautiful. This is what the Catlins has to offer!!

On to Surat Bay we headed and as we cruised along the stunning beach, locals and tourists enjoying their beautiful quiet morning walk were disturbed but not annoyed by us meandering by. Mostly they just smiled and waved, everyone loving the stunning place we were all enjoying.

As we reached Surat Bay settlement we raced through not wanting to get caught riding on their beautiful beach, and headed into Owaka for breakfast. Alas, there was one cafe open and Steve hated it from a previous visit so we headed on.

We continued on south via any and all gravel roads we could find, passing Purakaunui Falls without stopping for a visit. The forest and coastline and general dampness of the whole place had some reminders of my upbringing on the West Coast of the South Island. It is always special when other places remind me of my connection to the Coast. I love it.

We hit the main Owaka Highway (now the Papatowai Highway) again at Maclennan and headed off towards Niagara Falls (now on the Chaslands Highway). If you’re confused, don’t be – it’s all just one highway 🙂 . Just beyond Papatowai is one of those spectacular much photographed views that you see represent the Catlins everywhere – this is Tautoko Bay.

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Next stop, Niagara Falls, named by a surveyor with a sense of humour! The falls share little in resemblance with their cousin in North America, in fact, they are probably the smallest falls in the Catlins. Oh well, there’s a bloody good cafe there, where we stopped for an amazing feed of nachos for lunch and a good yarn with an American couple and their kids. They’d been travelling in NZ when lock-down happened and faced with the decision of staying or going home, decided to stay. Full credit and now they were able to get out and about and enjoy the beauty of the country for a bit longer, and as they said, there was no way they wanted to be in the US with the way COVID is being managed over there.

We really just wanted to sit in the conservatory of the cafe in the sun and chill the afternoon away, but our families were expecting us home. So we battled our way back to the bikes and turned to head north, again via every gravel road we could find. Over the next 190km back to Outram, near Mosgiel, we probably spent less than 20km on actual asphalt roads – a bloody good effort and also a ton of fun (except the newly graveled section near Lake Mahinerangi that was goddamn awful – marble size stones making everything just a bit hairy!!!).

We passed through Waikawa Valley, Slopedown, Ashley Downs, Clydevale, Tuapeka Mouth and Waipori arriving on the causeway across Lake Mahinerangi just as the sun set. A moment of impeccable timing – we seem to be good at those – but reason enough to stop and take a few pictures in the dying light. Just another stunner on this 24 hour trip of stunners.

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On we headed through Lee Stream, finally arriving back in Mosgiel early evening. What an afternoon it’d been, after getting into the groove of riding we just meditated and mesmerised the afternoon away. Nothing hairy, nothing crazy, nothing too adventurous, just an outstanding afternoon of being on the road, on our bikes, enjoying the loneliness and the company. It seems like it’s not that often we can say we had an afternoon where everything just went well – well it did, and it was bloody marvellous!!!