Remutaka cycle adventure

outdoors • Jan 5, 2021

We decided to go for a bicycle ride around the Remutaka ranges!

The Remutaka ranges lie across the bay to Wellington city, behind Days Bay, Eastbourne and the like.

We planned it thus, after much consultation to nztony's very helpful blog, metvuw, metservice, and windy.com:

Day 1: 36km, take a ferry in the arvo to Days Bay, ride the tailwind from Days Bay past the lighthouses to Baring head and upwards to camp at Corner Creek Campsite.
Day 2: 54km, riding past Ocean beach, up an extra 10km to Featherston for food and back to the fork to Remutaka Rail Trail, slog up the trail, crash at the Kaitoke Campsite.
Day 3: 35km downhill cruise to Petone and take those train things back to Wellington.

It was an ambitious plan, but we followed through quite well!

Day 1: was indeed a ride with the tailwind along the gravel path. We rubbernecked the lighthouses, contemplated the life of a lighthouse keeper, and tried to fly in the wind.
This must have been the lighthouse life

We rode in the glorious glow of a fading day, ate wraps by a stone wall, thanked God for all the wonderful views and sun and waves and wind and stuff. We even saw a rainbow!
Derailleur:
- However I planted my face in the gravel right at the beginning.
- The sun set and we rode in the dark soon after our direction changes northwards - against the wind. The terrain also became a lot sandier and shinglier.
- Corner Creek Campsite decided to move itself into day2's plan. The wind brought some showers with it as the darkness alighted properly onto the surrounding area. We came to a little meadow situation with a couple of toilets and tented there in the damp and dark.
- The tent was a tireless flappy bird in the wellington wind
Day 2: found us groggy and underslept, and coaxed us with sunshine and dew.
Not much stirred though until someone offered to make coffee (I still don't care for coffee). We found Corner Creek Campsite and Ocean Beach to be not that close to where we were - it probably still took around an hour's ride. The heat was growing early in the day and we stopped for a quick dip at Ocean Beach.
We found a family selling baking and chilled drinks out of a campervan. It was nearly as good as finding that camping spot the night before! We boosted on to Remutaka cycle trail, which was a slog and a half, and a half, and a half, and then there were the lovely dark tunnels, cold and damp and long, where you cannot see anything cycling into the tunnel except the speck of light at the end of it. There was also the long swingbridge. When we reached the peak we had a rest and some food, before rolling down a tremendously rewarding downhill, long, cool, and pine-scented, before reaching a shooting club near the base. We eventually tented at Kaitoke.
Derailleur:
- Featherston 10km away actually is a lot further in real life than on a map and we gave up the idea of going there and back. That's actually insane who the heck had that idea
- not exactly a derailleur but
- Emerging at the end of the rail trail we realised that going to the Kaitoke campsite involves 15 minutes on the busy highway (expressway? motorway? The one bicycles aren't supposed to be on).
- Campsite didn't have electricity for a while but luckily that was rectified soon.
Day 3: was like that sweet banger of a song that you don't want to stop. The downhill roll along the river on a nice sunny day was one to live for. There was ice cream in there somewhere and Peppy the alpaca.
Derailleur:
- Peppy wanted to eat my hair and Sebastian(redacted)'s beard and Domenica(redacted)'s tees.
- Peppy looked cool with sunnies on.
- trains were not running, only buses.