Hutt River Trail – Silverstream to Totara Park

Last Sunday, 16 November, we were joined by my sister and her husband to ride the Hutt River Trail from Silverstream to the Totara Park Bridge. This time we all rode folding bikes. John and I rode our new electric folders, and Aimée and Neil rode the original ones.

John and I rode our e-bikes without electric assist (i.e. with the dial set to 0), so that we would not have an unfair advantage over Aimée and Neil. However, I must admit that I enjoyed using the throttle to give me a boost to go zipping past them occasionally. Because the e-bike is heavier than I’ve been used to, I did tend to trail behind the others, so the throttle boost came in very handy to catch up without having to slog my guts out.

The Hutt River Trail just north of the Silverstream bridges (photo by John)

I don’t know who built these “cairns”, but they’ve been there for years (photo by John)

Approaching the Totara Park Bridge. The cabbage trees look gorgeous when they flower
 (photo by John)

When we got to the Totara Park Bridge, we debated whether we should get off the trail and ride into Upper Hutt for a coffee, but Aimée was feeling tired, and opted for turning around and going back to the cars. She has been very busy potting, and both had worked hard in the garden the previous day, getting everything looking good for her Pottery Open Weekend (refer my last blog post).

On the way back, we had to go through one of those irritating zig-zag gates – designed to stop hoons and their trail bikes. I found it quite tricky to manoeuvre through this gate with the new bike, as the back of it is very heavy to lift as you work your way around the zigzag. And as I was trying to steer the front end through, my left hand accidentally tweaked the throttle, resulting in the bike nearly rearing up! Woah!

I think this place is called Moonshine Park (photo by John)

By the time we got back to the cars, we had biked 18 km. We agreed to head into Lower Hutt to the Janus Bakkerij for lunch. The young man who brought us our food offered to take a photo of us all.

Lunch at Janus Bakkerij (photo by a café staffer with John's camera)