Solo Bikepacking

Exploring somewhere new on your bike for a few days is satisfying.

I’ve enjoyed a couple of solo bikepacking trips over the last couple of years around the top of the South Island and Northland.

I was inspired to do this after listening to account of pro-triathlete Laura Siddell’s training ride to Arthur’s Pass from Christchurch over a weekend on the Fitter Radio podcast. It sounded great to just head off with minimal gear and ride your bike all day!

Northland

In February 2019 I rode from Auckland Airport to Keri Keri Airport in the Bay of Islands over five days, via the Tour Aotearoa route and the Twin Coast Cycle Trail. Total distance was around 525km with several thousand metres of climbing. I used my commuting bike with gravel-friendly 28mm tyres.

I’d been wanting to ride the Twin Coast trail for a while and also had a yearning to ride over the hill into Opononi and be wowed by the sight of the dunes again, an experience that I found mind-blowing on the Tour of Northland road cycle event a few years ago - I think this was inspired also by the Northland-based Air New Zealand safety video!

I was also curious to see what it would be like to ride through Auckland, and just experience some more of Northland, especially experience the wilderness of Baylys Beach near Dargaville.

I flew from Tauranga after work on a Friday, build up my bike outside the airport and biked that evening to Mount Eden. From there I rode 90-140km for four days, stayed in Air B&Bs/motels/backpackers and enjoyed the last evening in Pahia, before biking to Keri Keri airport on the final morning, which happened to be Waitangi Day, so a interesting day to be in the area of the Waitangi Treaty grounds, which I rode through en route.

I posted my bike bag, a Ground Effect Tardis and pedal spanner from Auckland to my final destination in Pahia to save weight on the bulk of the trip.

Navigation through Auckland and up to the Twin Coast trail was easy using downloaded gps files from the Tour Aotearoa website in my Garmin and tweaking them using ridewithgps for my detour to Bayly’s Beach. Once on the Twin Coast trail from Horeke on the Hokianga Harbour, everything is signposted.

One of the really nice things about the trip was how friendly and interested people were in what I was doing, and how helpful a local was when ended up I running out of water in the middle of nowhere on a very hot day!

Great Taste Trail

A couple of years ago I was at a loose end over Easter and decided to bike the Great Taste Trail. While pretty tame in adventure terms, it was a really enjoyable ride at the end of a triathlon season and one of the highlights was crossing paths with a local while riding along the beautiful Motueka Valley, having a great chat for 20km and a cup of coffee in Motueka before heading our separate ways.