Hey all,
At the beginning of this year I took a trip around the South Island on my trusty old GN250 with my dad. It was one of the best trips of my life (despite everyone thinking I was crazy for doing it on a GN). Just thought I'd post a little write up on it for anyone thinking of doing a similar thing.
The total trip was about 6000km including from Auckland and back in the North Island, and we took about three weeks to do it.
The first day we rode from the ferry to Blenheim and then onto the Molesworth rd, This was one of the most scenic rides on the whole trip and quite fun, being on gravel and all, we spent the night at the DOC campsite about halfway down the road, it’s about 7 bucks for the night which is well worth it as I would say it is one of the best campsites I’ve been to in NZ. Despite being gravel the Molesworth rd is very well groomed and could be ridden by most bikes, there are very minimal river crossings and they are all pretty shallow.
The nest day we rode the rest of the Molesworth rd down to Hanmer springs and then back up the rainbow rd to St Arnaud (SP?). The Rainbow rd and Jacks, and Jollies passes are a bit more rugged than Molesworth but still pretty rideable, unlike certain 4X4 track we rode on just outside of Murchison which even a pretty hardcore 4 wheel drive would have had trouble with! It was so steep in some sections we had to shut off the engine and use the clutch as a back brake because we needed both brakes and both feet on the ground to stop from sliding down the hill!
From St Arnaud we drove all the way down to Arthurs pass, skipping out Christchurch, all the roads around Christchurch were dead straight for tens of kilometres at a time but once we started heading inland they got way more fun and twistycoming into Arthurs pass was freezing though!!!
From Arthurs Pass we boosted down to Twizel which was pretty uneventful, but great road surface the whole way so it didn't take too long. Also there is a pizza place in Twizel that serves some of the best pizza I've ever had, would definitely recommend it!!
It was a relatively short hop from Twizel to Queens town with Lindis Pass being the highlight! It’s an excellent quality surface with nice curves with great visibility! Very cold though!! We chilled in Queenstown for a while doing heli-biking (which is awesome for anyone who is into mountain biking!). Another great eating tip is the Arthurs Pt Tavern just outside of Queenstown, great seafood platters!! While in Queenstown we took a daytrip down skipper’s canyon which is a very entertaining experience!! The gravel is ok but the fear factor is pretty high as the roads are very narrow and the cliffs have a solid overhang on them!!!
We took the Earnslaw ferry out of Queenstown, which is a very unique and worthwhile experience! The ferry is not designed for bikes so you just have to drive over a ramp onto the boat and park up on the deck. We had to take the screen off my dad’s bike to fit in on the boat (he rides a DL1000). The Ferry dropped us of on the other side of the lake and we drove to the Mavora lakes and spent a night there, a great place but not as deserted or spectacular as Molesworth.
The nest day we looped down around through Mossburn and back up to Wanaka, on the way we rode the Nevis rd, which is apparently the highest road in NZ, again it was gravel but this time pretty hardcore gravel which had 25 river crossings in 24KM!! The Speedo on my bike crapped out because all the grease had washed out of the worm drive.
From Wanaka we rode North to Haast and then up the west Coast to Reefton. This was a long day but the roads were some of the most fun on the whole trip! Great fun in the twisties and some really nice views too!
The roads from Reefton up to Motueka were great fun also! Once in Motueka we managed to get my Speedo fixed at the local Suzuki place, from there we road along the coast back to Piction where we caught the late ferry back to wellington.
The weather we had on the trip was perfect it only rained once the whole time and even then it wasn't heavy! I would definitely recommend this trip to anyone, it was great fun staying out of the main centres and living out of panniers in tents!
Don’t let anyone tell you that you have the wrong bike for it either, because while trying to overtake a huge truck on a GN can be frustrating at times, the overall experience is pretty painless!
Photos here:
http://www.bebo.com/PhotoAlbum.jsp?M...mId=6857567175
All the Photo's were taken on our 2mp Camera phones which did a supprisingly good job!
Anyway I hape this can help someone out or provide motivation to go out and do something like this as it was once of the best experiences of my life!
Peace
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Originally Posted by Katman
You can sure have fun on a 250cc 
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