Plans for this tour are beginning to gel. Flights are booked - I'll be departing for Dunedin on October 19 to spend a month touring mostly the back roads around the bottom of the South Island.
Here is a map of my proposed route. It's not final yet - I will likely add a few side trips, but it's essentially the way I'll be going.
From Dunedin I'm going to ride part way along the Otago rail trail (I may take the Taieri Gorge scenic train to the start of the rail trail) then take to the back roads and head north across the Dunstan and Dalgety Ranges to Lake Tekapo, before turning back south for Wanaka. I did the Tekapo – Wanaka section last tour, and enjoyed it enough to repeat, despite a long day crossing the Lindis Pass.
I may take a detour into Mount Cook Village this time, but the main reason for returning to Wanaka (apart from it being a spectacularly scenic place) is that I want to ride the Crown Range Road (the highest in New Zealand) over to Queenstown, where I will take the old steamer TSS Earnslaw across Lake Wakitipu and then ride the back roads to Mavora Lakes, where I'm going to spend some time fishing to see if I can catch some trout in the lakes.
Then I'll head to Te Anou for some more fishing will and probably take an excursion to Doubtful Sound, as I've already visited Milford Sound. From there it'll be right down to the bottom through Invercargill, stopping to see the world's fastest Indian, then on to Bluff, before retuning along the Catlins coast to Dunedin.
I'll update my blog shortly and start an new tour journal to post the details. More to come.
Fush'n'chups anyone?
