Hanmer Springs II

MikeO

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Dereham, Norfolk, today...
13th March 2017

After two and a half days waiting it out at Oamaru, I decide to bite the bullet. There's a huge weather front moving south from North Island (where it has been severe enough to cause flooding) and I need to get on the north side of it. I've laundered everything I have, reorganised my kit (and found another spare S80 I'd forgotten I'd packed!
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) and listened to all my podcasts.

It's time to man up and get wet.

I wake at about 0800 after a good night's sleep and pack the bike. There will be no pictures today, as the rain is a hard, steady drizzle and everything has got to be under cover from the off.

My destination is Hanmer Springs, where I stayed a couple of nights before. Unfortunately the Settlers Motel, which was excellent, is too expensive on this occasion, so I'm booked into the Alpine Springs Motel instead. Bettie tells me that this is about 230 miles and, as I push the starter at 0900, that I should be there at 1416.

The bike's fully fuelled - there is no reason not to do this in one hop, so that is what I intend to do, to minimise the misery...
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I'm wearing my heavyweight waterproof gloves, and all my waterproof gear - the shower cap is on the tank bag. I ease my way out into the wet Monday morning traffic and head towards Christchurch.

The rain is consistent - cold, steady and fairly heavy. This means that I don't have to spend too much time wiping the visor, as there's sufficient water moving on it to keep it clear. Traffic is light and I make good progress - but I can already tell that my waterproof trousers have developed a slight leak in the left knee. The problem with this is that it will gradually start to fill my left boot, plus the wicking effect on my base layers will eventually, over the course of the next couple of hours, ensure I will be wet from the waist down...
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There's nothing to be done, so I carry on. I have the hot grips set to High and my seat heater set to Low and - for now - I'm relatively comfortable.

New Zealanders do not put their lights on in conditions of poor daylight visibility. There are as many vehicles with lights off as on - which makes overtaking difficult. I still manage to average 60mph in the first hour and have cut Bettie's ETA to 1355...

I've ridden nearly the entire route that I am doing today, on different days, so I know it's not a challenging road, so I hunker down behind the (raised) windscreen and count off the miles. I use a variety of techniques to keep my mind active - recalculating Km to go into miles, then mentally assigning a distance left to run to one I am familiar with "That's the distance from work to home" and so on - it keeps morale up.

Bloody hell that sounded sad...
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I skirt around the edge of Christchurch and eventually turn off onto Highway 7 towards Hanmer Springs. Shortly afterwards a Subaru coming the other way flashes his lights and I adhere meticulously to the 100kph limit for just over two miles before seeing the police car parked up doing a radar check...

Eventually I turn off onto the 7a towards Hamner Springs and arrive at the Motel at 1325. The motel, to my dismay, is about three quarters of a mile from the centre of town (no wonder it was cheap). No matter - I am cold and in need of shelter. I'm quickly checked in and switch the heat to High and turn the shower on. I strip my sopping clothes off (top half dry!) and get into the shower and stay there for a long time. After a coffee I still can't seem to get warm, so get into bed and sleep soundly for four hours...

At about 1900 I grab a brolly and take walk into town and have a beer and a steak. I meet a chap called Solis Norton (he had hippy parents), who is apparently the great great grandson of the founder of the Norton motorcycle firm. He's on four wheels today (and very glad of it) and has come up from Dunedin. He's going to be delivering his friend's KTM 950 something-or-other to him in a couple of weeks doing the same route and says he hopes he gets better weather...

I'm still tired so say farewell and stumble back to the hotel, via a cross country walkway where a Possum crosses my path, stops and looks at me, then scampers up a tree right beside me, stops and looks at me again, before disappearing with a rustle of leaves.

Apparently they are treated as a pest (they are an Australian import) - you see them as roadkill everywhere - but this is the first one I have encountered in the wild.

I get back to my pleasantly warm room and drag the laptop out - not much to say, except I hope the weather's better tomorrow (as it it forecast to be)...
 
I'd have thought you of all people would be used to be being stared at!:green gri

Shame about the weather though. :(
 


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