Cyclists’ delight — warm sun and a tail wind

Press, 7 March 1984, Page 13

Cyclists’ delight — warm sun and a tail wind

By

Derrick Rooney

The hardest part of any tour is waiting to leave. This time the problem was more than pre-tour nerves. It was not just the real thing — it was a trial run too. Sean’s new frame had arrived just before the week-end, and we had finished setting it up with all his running gear on Sunday afternoon — less than 18 hours before we were scheduled to leave. That did not allow time for fine tuning. But by dusk on Sunday we were packed and ready to go at first light.

On Monday rain fell, persistent drenching rain from the south-east, the sort of rain that hangs about the foothills for days. Through Tuesday, too, the sky dripped, and the Weather Office forecast days of southerly. We were to head south. Tempted by memories of the achingly beautiful Punakaiki coast, I talked about loading the bikes in a train, to seek sun in Westland.

Wednesday dawned mildly and stickily. Heavy rain fell at breakfast time, then stopped. The forecaster was pessimistic. Everybody was on a short fuse, and the house resounded to the noise of bickering. About mid-morning the clouds parted, briefly, and I could see, away up, the telltale westerly streamers. The southerly was dying! The wind swung back to the east, and by 11 we were on the road.

It was one of those rare days when the whole world seems tuned in to bicycles — hazy sun, hardly any glare, mild and humid, a tail wind, and courtesy from motorists. In no time, or so it seemed, we were at the top of the terrace, ready for the exhilarating descent to the Rakaia Gorge.

At the iron bridge we paused, briefly, to watch a handful of hopeful anglers dabbling for salmon in the off-colour water. What an extraordinary place. In midsummer it becomes a little village of caravan dwellers, for some of whom that magical moment when they hook a salmon may come one, or twice, or not at all in a season.

They are an odd bunch. A few days earlier one of them had given me a lift home — I had gone for a training ride without, for inexplicable reasons, carrying a spare tube, and had, inevitably, had a flat. He had been unable to fish in the muddy river, had contented himself with mowing the “lawn” around his caravan, and was on his way back to the city — with the grass clippings. It was a curious encounter, made more dream-like because Sean and I had been sitting in a paddock, well out of sight of the road, eating our lunch and admiring the view downriver, when he materialised behind us. He did not say what had prompted him to climb the fence and walk part-way down the hill to find us, an,d I did not ask.

The pause allowed time also to admire the bridge, a century and one year old and looking as spruce

as new. There are bigger bridges, and more beautiful bridges, in Canterbury, but not many that are more interesting. There is no other bridge like this in New Zealand, and only one like it in the world — somewhere in North America. But its interest lies as much in what it did not quite become as in what it is.

The gorge bridge is a continuing reminder of one of the unfinished chapters in our history. It is strong, far stronger than seemingly it needed to be 101 years ago, and that is because it was designed to take trains — as part of the Midland line from Oxford to Geraldine, a grandiose project formulated in the 1870 s to open up to trade and industry the hinterland of the South Island. Then came the Great Depression of the 1880 s, the country ran out of money, and the line was never built. Did I hear someone say history repeats itself? Bridges were built, however, over the Rakaia at the gorge, the Waimakariri at its gorge, and the Selwyn at Glentunnel. The Rakaia bridge was prefabricated in the United States, shipped to New Zealand in sections, carted to the gorge from Christchurch, and assembled on the site. How the engineers managed to get it across the river I don’t know, but no doubt they had their methods. The concrete bridge on the other side of the island in the gorge dates from the early 19405, when it replaced a wooden structure. A man who worked on its construction told me, and I have no reason to doubt this, that the bridge was instigated by the military so that they could move their heavy equipment south in the event of a Japanese invasion. While I thought about this, we sucked barley-sugars and prepared for the hard bit — the steep climb up the south side of the gorge which, as it was to turn out, was the toughest climb of the tour. Halfway up my legs were screaming for a granny gear, and we walked the steepest 200 metres. It was the only hill to defeat us in a week’s riding. From the top, past Mt Hutt station, it was a dream ride nearly all the way to Geraldine — flat, and easy spinning with the wind on our hind-quarters. Pre-tour scheduling had called for a lunch stop at the lovely Sharplin Falls reserve, at Stavely, but that had been for an eight o’clock start, not an 11 o’clock one. By Alford Forest our appetites were flapping, and we stopped for pies from the shop and chunks of coarse bread from the loaf we carried with us. While we ate, a black cat supplied entertainment. It marched from behind the store,

then strolled along the roadside, as though looking for precisely the right spot to cross, which it did in stiff-legged purposeful fashion. At the other side it paused, then leapt sideways into the long grass, from where it emerged, seconds later, with a fieldmouse clamped in its jaws. Lunch all round.

Staveley is like many names on the inland Canterbury map — blink as you go by, even on a bike, and you could miss it. But it is a pretty place, with a framework of thoughtfully planted farm trees on the roadsides, and dominated by the bush-clad slopes of Mt Winterslow and the rocky north face of Mt Somers.

The temptation of a side trip to the reserve was strong, but we pedalled on. The day's destination, Geraldine, seemed a long way off and ahead of us rain clouds were again descending from the mountains. Similarly, I resisted the temptation at Mt Somers to turn off the main road to examine what looked like a field of lilies. The weather was still mild and sticky, and by mid-afternoon a few big raindrops were spattering down. Somewhere below Mayfield the rain came in from the southeast, and thickened. The drab landscape which had been green turned uniformly grey, lightened only by the fluorescent pink streaks of our raincapes. Drenching, though warm, the rain poured off our legs and squelched in our shoes as we crossed the Rangitata, whose waters we had crossed already several times in the big irrigation channel that winds across the high plains and discharges eventually into the Rakaia through the tiny Highbank power station. The rain eased, then stopped, as we rode into Geraldine, and we put away our capes. What an attractive town — and what a disappointment it had in store for us. After six o’clock the town was as lively as a crematorium on a wet Sunday. Even the fish-and-chip shop was shut. No dinner for us. But the camping ground had a spare cabin, we got a brew going, and soon we were warm and dry again. Later, we found an open dairy round the corner, and had a late supper, of pies and milkshakes.

Later still, partly to squeeze the last bit of daylight and partly to escape the blare of a portable television from a nearby vulgarity (a trailer-tent decked out in blue-and-white like a Spanish bungalow, complete with imitation louvred shutters), we rode around the town, envied some gardens, made friends with a young and silly German pointer, and admired some of Geraldine’s fine trees — handsome American oaks in the domain, and some well-grown conifers, including an outstanding cryptomeria, so tall and narrow of habit that a casual eye might miss its bulk.

Afterwards, it was back to the cabin, and to bed — tomorrow was another day on the road.