Quote Originally Posted by veldthui View Post
Went down in February for the TT2000. Left Picton at 6:25am with GPS indicating arrival at Christchurch at 11:40am. Plenty of stretches of 80kph and road ruined by trucks. Traffic not too bad that time of the morning but the stops for road works are a killer. Gave up counting after 20 stops. Did not see any cops until closer to Christchurch. Final arrival time was 12:20pm. Not my GPS is usually pretty accurate with its arrival time but all the roadworks stops just killed it. The workers were great however and many when they saw me coming kept the Go facing me and even reversed it from stop to go at times to let me catch the back of the queue.
I finished the TT2000 in Picton as well but rode down to Murchison afterwards - it was the motel owner there that told me they were fully booked until the end of April, fortunately I'd booked months before. I think I must have ridden an hour or so after the ferry traffic as there were lots of cops, 7 in all between Picton and Murchison.

In the pub I heard the road gangs saying that would start setting up at 6am so left at 3:30am to get through Lewis Pass ahead of them. Worked well as I didn't have to stop anywhere except one set of lights on a bridge. Didn't see any cops until the Hurunui Hotel. Traffic was clear other than the odd lorry. Around 6am onwards there was a lot of traffic coming the other way.

So as Kickaha suggests doing the trip at night is a good way to miss the road works, just time it so you're also missing the ferry traffic.