SMC Tour of the North Island 27 Nov-5 Dec

**Slyer** · 22nd December 2010, 13:11

Sport tourer I reckon for the most part but either will do. Just depends on how much gravel you plan on doing.
Why the North Island, not the South Island?

**NotHisRealName** · 22nd December 2010, 13:25

I was born in Wellington and spent 10 years in Paraparaumu. All I ever saw of the place was there, and the occasional visit to Hastings. I'm keen to spend a good day in my old hometown, and see the rest of the island. I'd like to do the South Island in the future, though.

So, the roads around the West aren't too bad then? Google Maps Street View show some fairly long gravel tracks/roads. Over here tracks like that can sometimes feel like cattle stops (cattle grid) and I'm not sure a sports tourer would enjoy that too much.

**Slyer** · 22nd December 2010, 13:51

Depends what roads you want to do. Stick to the state highways and you won't have to do gravel at all!

**Magua** · 22nd December 2010, 15:01

We had a sports(ish) bike, a dual purpose with road tyres and a tourer. None of them had any real problems with the varied road conditions we came across.

It's more rider than bike.

**NotHisRealName** · 22nd December 2010, 18:20

So was it only really parts of Ohura Road that were unsealed? It's hard to find the dirt roads using Google Maps. Someone posted a link to some books in my introduction thread which I'll look at in more detail, but it's the local knowledge that I'm here for.

**Slyer** · 22nd December 2010, 20:46

Here's an updated map of roads we took or were going to take just for you.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UT...15,7.13562&z=8

The road south of palmy was really nice the one that looped around to Dannevirke, small amount of gravel there too. You can continue it all the way around to Waipukurau if you wanted but we were pooped by that time.

Also most of the road going south Marokopa-ish were gravel. The falls out that way were well worth seeing and the road heading west was just fantastic, very windy and awesome.

Magua had a book that we used to find great places to go. What was it called again?