Roads around Auckland 2.

[Crisis management]

Just to help prove there are fun roads within 200kms of auckland city.....this is my favourite quick sunday morning ride (about 2 hours total, 40% on sealed surfaces).
Heading northwest on the motorway to Riverhead and Ararimu road which starts off sealed but with a wide grass verge/ bank alongside which everyone, 4wd's, bikes, horses etc uses......so about 3 kms of playing in clay & grass avoiding the huge holes dug by the 4wds!
Off the side of the road just as it turns to gravel but still with short side tracks to play on. see pic 1
This continues for 8kms thru Bald hill road and Ireland road, medium gravel and hard pack with lots of corners and views.
Back on the seal to kaukopakopa and to wards Helensville on Inland road, again with rolling hills and a mixture of bends and straights and more jihadist sheep. see pic 2.

After Helensville, south to Rimmers road, the access to Woodhill forest...more gravel and a descent towards the west coast. see pic 3.

[Big Dave]

That's actually the route depicted by the BD and Xwhatever in V1.

[xwhatsit]

Heh, I thought it looked familiar. Except wasn't Inland the road that was closed? Or Ireland. Very smooth roads, there's sealed suburban streets that are worse.

[Crisis management]

To continue....past the woodhill bike park (highly recomended for fat bikes, particularly if you never want to get out alive) and down to Muriwai beach to the northern vehicle access, see pic 1.
This is a sand dune access and dependant on the dryness of the sand varies from manageable to "just a dig a hole and bury the bike'. Today was dry and I had to walk the DR up the steepest part otherwise the back wheel was just in trenching mode! Top of the dune and neat views of the Tasman, see pic 2.
Down the dune to the beach is easy, gravities good like that, but it was proving difficult to a guy coming up in a quad with a trailer full of culled deer....the quad was going up but the trailer wasn't. Lots of runs back and forth with deer on the quad to empty the trailer!
On the beach, pics 3 & 4, its an easy run 12kms south to Muriwai itself but be careful of the fisherman with their kontikis cause you can't see the line!
The latest 4wd sacrifice to the sea has progressed another 50 metres down the beach from a couple of weeks ago, give it another month and it won't be visible at all...anyone wanting Isuzu parts will have to hurry up!
At the southern end there's a small stream to cross and a well signposted exit (flat) to the road. Even this became a struggle with having to walk the DR out 20 metres or so as the sand was so dry.
Unfortunatley, unless you have more than 2 hours to spend, it's back on the seal for the 25 minutes back to Auckland.

Not bad for living in the centre of the biggest city in Auckland!

[Crisis management]

You lot obviously didn't wait for the part 2 bit......

[xwhatsit]

Ah, but he's a big girl wot doesn't like riding on sand anyway, so he won't be interested

Kewl. Lucky boy. Wish I was having that much fun today