Ciclovía, Ataturk Memorial Park, and the Wellington Waterfront

Sunday 14 February was a perfect day for the now yearly event of Ciclovía. For a whole day, from 9 am to 9 pm, the road between Shelly Bay and Scorching Bay was closed to motorised traffic, so that the people of Wellington could walk, cycle, scooter, skate, skateboard, push wheelchairs and pushchairs, ride cargo bikes, tandems and even unicycles, along the 4.2 km distance without the danger from cars.

Again, the day was a huge success, as apparently more than 3000 people, including lots of families with children, took the opportunity to do so.

For us the day was much more than Ciclovía. We left home at 11 am, and got home at 8 pm, having biked 49 km, though obviously we weren't biking all of that time. We parked at Greta Point, and on our e-bikes, we pedalled along Evans Bay and Cobham Drive to Shelly Bay Road.

Shelly Bay Road (photo by John)

Tawa to Plimmerton

On a fine Saturday last week (24 October), we biked from Tawa to Plimmerton and back. We again parked at Takapu Road railway station. John suggested we could bike from home, but I am still a bit worried about biking on Middleton Road (see postscript below), which has either a very narrow shoulder or none at all, and there is a reasonable amount of car traffic using that road with the speed limit being 70 km/hr on the most winding part!

We biked the same route as we had a couple of weeks earlier, taking time to linger near the Mana Marina area for a bit. We discovered that recently, a garden area near the yacht jetties had been “embellished” by the display of a number of colourful garden gnomes – one of them, gruesomely, lying face down with a knife in his back!