Cycling in Central Otago

After our night camping in Fiordland National Park, near Milford Sound, we drove on to Central Otago.  Actually, this was Nilgun's first go at driving the truck (aka campervan) and she did fantastically well!  Until now we had hardly used the bikes so we headed to a bike trail that has some wineries dotted along it. This sounded great, biking for me, wine tasting for Nilgun! However, things did not all goto plan as I had underestimated what difficulty an intermediate level bike trail would be. I was pretty happy charging up and down the steep ascents and descents but Nil, on her ladies hybrid, was not so confident.

After a while Nilgun took a time out to admire the scenery and let me tackle the trail as fast as I could. I returned a while later reporting I had found another winery, this news gave a renewed sense of energy to tackle a bit more of the trail!  We stopped for a quick wine tasting before I headed back up the trail to fetch the campervan, annoyingly once half way back I realised the keys were in the bag I left with Nilgun. Whilst Nilgun was enjoying a cold glass of wine I was getting more of a workout that I had bargained for.

The following day we drove to Alexandra and together cycled a small segment of the Central Otago Rail trail - an old disused railway has been converted into a cycle friendly trail. After our gentle ride, Nil drove me further up the line so I could blast the 30kms back to Alexandra. I managed it in well under 1 hour 30 minutes but I did have the advantage that it was slightly downhill!