Virgin Territory

The start of the track at the end of Humber Rd.

Wa hoo - bit scary in the wind.

Riding past Onekawa industrial area.

Under the Old bridge and over the weir, and under the express-way.

Peep holes to observe the birds.

It's always exciting to conquer virgin territory! The long awaited Estuary ride was advertised in the paper as being 'hopefully' open last weekend. Hopefully being the operative word! A small group of us (Rose and Bob, Fenton and us) met at Humber Rd (by the optimus yatching head-quarters) and hit the Estuary walk trail. Felt a bit bad about it, as really, it is still a walking track and there were hundreds (or so it seemed) of people on it, all ducking for cover as we tinged our little bells. It is really too narrow for bikes and walkers to pass comfortably on it. So we have decided to by-pass it in the future.
It's only a short stretch and we were soon on the old Westshore bridge. From here, we ducked under the express-way and onto the new path, which we had tried sometime ago, but the gate was locked. Guess what? It still was! There were so many people on the track - hippies, families, wrinklies (like us), -and everyone was just heaving their bikes over the gate,so  we decided we would too.
It was lovely for a little bit; following the line of the wetlands. Apparently Transit (New Zealand's roading contractor) wanted to put the expressway through this wetland, as it was the shortest route to the airport. The Ahuriri Protection Society put forward a forceful protest and it was diverted to its current position. Great! Unfortunately they have been just as adamant about bikers, walkers and dog owners. So for a lot of the ride the ducks were buffered from us 'despoilers' by a large stop bank. The original plans for the track is vastly different from what it is. Good for the birds I guess, although the ones we did pass didn't seem too phased about sharing a little bit of their home with us.
We passed through lovely meadows (paddocks, pastures, fields) of grass and russian-fudge-coloured cows (not to mention a rather alarming sized bull but as I was too busy negotiating the path he had roughed up, I didn't really bother about him.) This farmland is owned by the Napier Harbour Board and run by Landcorp. It appears very lush and fertile and parts were being mown for hay that day. It's hard to believe that is was all under water a mere 80 years ago.

Oh no! Locked gated! Lucky we're such rebels.

Fudge coloured cow.

Nearing the end of the rough bit ( until the next one, that is).

Now that's a bridge to nowhere.

Hunkered down behind the Estuary.

The limestone ends abrubtly ( as did the battery in my camera) and then we really roughed it to the 'other Bridge to Nowhere', by Park Island. The track is prepared for the limestone having been passed over by a grader blade, but it is simply not there yet. Lucky we are such intrepid bikers. A bit of jarring and juddering and then we were soon rewarded with the concrete path again - oh bliss!

The end of the limestone.

The top of the stop-bank looking back.

Do we carry on - we're not sissys - of course we do.

Bit rough ( an understatement)

Hooray! We have a bit of a tail wind that shoots us down the concrete pathway down Prebensen Drive (a main artery) but stops at a very painful point - so now we have to negotiate a terrifying crossing and a mere 100 metres to our junction. Rich and I have done this bit before and feel just a little bit grand guiding the rest of our party along a track which we can only describe as 'more exciting but less dangerous' (so long as a train doesn't come on by). We wave goodbye to our new friends who have travelled at least half of the way with us. At times they easily pass us until I point out to Rich, that  one of the guys has exactly the same bike, so Rich drags him off. Ha ha - he didn't even realise there was a competition.
Funny thing is - we all arrive at our starting point at exactly the same time (I suspect our way WAS shorter, but we may have taken longer.)
We haven't bought our thermoses today so we go our seperate ways. It's not even 15 ks so although we weren't sore, we were satisfied.