Time for a "transfer day" to get us within easy 1/2 day distance to Christchurch.
As much as I like to look at the Canterbury Plains from heights like Mt. Hutt or the start of the Lees Valley Road or such....they are a 2hr. PITA transfer across the flats in a mostly straightline pattern.
To spice things up, and for shit + giggles, let's have another go at the Hakatere Valley, Clearwater Lake, some LotR locations and finally, hopefully, make it to Erewhon Station, a Clydesdale Stud of international repute.
Twice before the weathergods had shown us "the bird" in years past, both times the winds had been absolutely brutal, whipping up stinging sand and small pebbles hammering bikes and riders to the point
of ultimately getting blown over or blown off the bike.
And the winds were up again today, strong gusts whipping up small plumes of sand and dust the second be turned inland at Mount Somers.
They know why they put up info signs....
Onto the gravel at Old Hakatere Town
Nice to get out of the ever increasing wind gusts at Potts Lodge....
Potts Lodge Concierge Team
Cozy place....and the sole staff busy with a vacuum cleaner in the back nearly has a heart attack being confronted with a bunch of dusty old farts.
Nice girl, from near Liege in Belgium, close to the German border and an area I'm pretty familiar with from many childhood family bushwalking and skiing weekends.
Remembering a few words of her native Flemish dialect gets us a smile and a big pot of plunger coffee.
"From one White-Beard to another, lemme tell you somethin' about sacks-on-your-back..."
Charged up again, it's back in the saddle for the final stretch.
Back out there it's still blowing a half-gale....and yeah, they love their gravel here thick and deep.
....and the gusts are getting to "serious" level.,. just check the clouds of sand and debris blown out of the riverbed.
Looks like we are at the right place now....beaufiful critters!!
Getting out of the windbreak of the farmgate-trees...
...that wind is getting ferocious! That's most of the wide riverbed airborne over there


We gotta get out of here....right now.
With the gusts mainly in the back, it's only the occasional veering-offline that produces some "uplifting moments" but makes for a rapid return to Mount Somers for a cuppa and some nice pies from the shop for an early lunch.
Then a zigzag of straight, sealed bits through the plains to Rakaia and the main Hwy SH1 to cross the Rakaia River.
Which proves a real piece of work and some white-knuckled shitzenpants, getting bobbed around like a rubber-dinghy in a tsunami.
More flat zigzags to join up with the Banks Peninsula highway SH75 for our final target, the pre-booked old farmhouse near Little River.

