A Big Travel Day... NOT! As we Move on 12km!
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
Monday 24 August
After a wonderful relaxing weekend with the Websters, Jonny was off to work early and we packed up in leisurely fashion, on a gloriously golden morning.
We thanked Debs for having us, said our farewells, dragooned her into a goodbye selfie and trundled off to the Alexandra dump station, a couple of shops in town and then over to Clyde, just 12kms from our starting point!
We parked up above the Clyde Dam at Burton Creek Recreation Reserve (NZMCA site# 8787), a freedom camp like at Lake Pukaki, and where a couple of other vans were already in residence. Great spot, we got a park right by the edge of Lake Dunstan with the waters lapping at rocks just metres from Banjo’s door. The reserve has a max capacity of 15 vans and a max stay of 3 nights; they request you park at right angles to the water but at this time of year there’s heaps of space for all to park parallel.
Grabbed a quick bite of lunch, High Country Salmon offcuts - in a salad for me & sandwiches for him. Deeeelicious! Then Louis got the bikes down, wrestled with the tyre inflation for a bit, then we hopped on board and set off up the Lake Dunstan Cycle Trail for a as long as we could manage. Louis has ridden recently but I reckon it’s about 2-3 months since I last went out on my bike… hope I can remember what to do! 🚲 🚲
We’d thought it’d be nice to get Hugo Bridge, but discovered that was almost 20km away from this end, we weren’t feeling super fit and the wind was blowing up a storm down the gorge. We managed about 10km of the trail before our bums got sore, my knees started grumbling and the wind whipped up to quite a hooley! It was still about 8-10km to the Hugo Bridge but that’ll have to wait for a better weather day! We turned back somewhere around the 28km marker and almost got blown off our bikes several times on the way back to the dam - it was so gusty I got all fearful and hopped off to walk a few metres here and then. About halfway back, suddenly my chain jumped off the gears ⚙️ and I ground to a halt. Luckily Louis had a toolkit and was able to fix it after a bit of heaving and pulling & getting covered in oil. Thanks honey - you’re my hero 🦸
Finally made it home a couple of hours after we originally left.
Siesta then we walked back up the lake a few hundred metres to the public toilets at the boat club - admiring the golden sunset clouds gathering over the hills. I rescued a bumble bee from outside the toilet block - I think it was feeling a tad battered by the wind so I left it in a patch of lupins over by the trailhead in the lee of the hills. Louis checked out the lake temperature… he wont be swimming in there again any time soon! ❄️🌡️ But I have to say I love the illustrated sign warning cyclists not to get impaled on the end of the pointy rowing boats!
We had dinner (venison sausages from Pak'n'Save in Timaru - soooo good!) in front of the third episode of “Ludwig” (last one for a week or two) then got on with some admin. By now the wind was absolutely howling through the gorge, shaking Banjo around like a ferry on the Cook Strait and we’d had to bring Starlink in and batten down the hatches… rough old night ahead!
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