Just got back from a week at Castlepoint. The Dolphins were frolicking as we left.
What a brilliant day to ride back!
We packed up, had breakfast at the store and I left there about 9:15am. I'd threatened to ride the Tinui-Alfredton road many times before, but someone had always talked me out of it because of the 30km of gravel.
Boy am I glad I did it. The roads leading to the gravel were heaps of fun. Twisty, smooth, and no traffic. The gravel itself was "interesting". Freshly graded (as in deep) in parts, about as wide as someone's driveway most of the way, and full of little deceptions. The signpost at Tinui says "Alfredton 33Km". The signpost where you begin your ascent says "Alfredton 29Km". After you've travelled 14km from Tinui. The next signpost you see says "Alfredton 29Km" after you've travelled about another 6km. The gravel road was mostly pretty good, meaning I could do about 40-50km/hr pretty comfortably on my hard ballon tyres (compared to a dirt bike that is) and I got used to the bike moving around pretty quickly.
The scenery through here is unbelievable. Real "backblocks" stuff interspersed with dark forest sections, with switchbacks, steep descents, gullies, rams the size of jersey cows, and a hawk devouring roadkill round every second corner.
Lots of logging trucks use the road, so every bridge or corner has a lovely series of corrugations. Soon got used to standing up a lot. Only moment came when the rut I was following headed for the ditch and a deep layer of gravel on a downhill 180 corner. What was that maxim again? "When in doubt, gas it". Oh yeah. Bwaaaaaaaaaaa - shot a couple of magpies down with the roost. Got round the corner too. Really want a KTM Adventure 640 now. The 40 or so kms of gravel took me about 50 minutes, but it was actually fun. I can kind of see what all those dirt bike people rabbit on about now.
Once back on the tar stuff, the rest of the trip to Pahiatua went pretty darn quickly. Met an Intruder 400 rider from Hamilton called Verena. I was a bit flummoxed with the 400, because it's the first 400 Intruder I've seen. Looks like the 800, but it's water cooled. She was a dag, and we chatted about family and attitudes to female bikers and Japanese cruisers. She's not exactly getting the red carpet rolled out for her by either the cruiser brigade, or the rest of us (you fellas know who I'm talking about), so if anyone bumps into a woman on an Intruder 400, be nice, 'cos I said so. Grrr.
The rest of the trip home was a blast. There was practically NO traffic all the way home, just the normal McKay's crossing snarl. From Palmy to Levin was the quietest I've ever seen it. I saw two L platers today, one obeying the 70km/hr restriction religiously just out of Shannon (stop that, you'll get hurt), and another person teetering down Paekak. We gotta get that law changed folks, it's stupid. 70 km/hr is just a mobile hazard on the open road.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go clean all that dust off my bike.
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Hope you're well rested.
hehe (PT)
Originally Posted by NC30_chick
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