Graffiti or art?

On one of our fairly frequent rides down to the local café and supermarket, we noticed a young man doing a painting on a Chorus cabinet by the side of the road. I called out “Wow!” as we rode past, which he ackowledged with a wave. It looked intriguing, so on our way home, we stopped by and had a chat with him. 

Talking to the artist (photo by John)

Tawa to Gear Homestead

On Sunday 20 March, we went for a gentle ride to investigate whether the Kenepuru to Porirua section of Te Ara Tawa was open for use yet. I was still coming right from what was ailing me the previous week, so didn’t want to do anthing too energetic. But I figured I could “cope” with lunch at the Gear Homestead Café!

We parked at the Takapu Road station carpark, which is the beginning of Te Ara Tawa, and pedalled off towards Kenepuru. We were disappointed to find the path along the railway line to Porirua still blocked. (PS - We went there again a week later, on Easter Sunday, but still no luck. Celia Wade-Brown, Wellington mayor, stated on Facebook that it will be officially opened at 3pm on 7 April.)

At Kenepuru, the new track to Porirua was still fenced off (photo by John)

Mangaroa Valley and Te Marua

On Wednesday 16 March we were due to go for a Folding Goldies ride. The plan was to take the train to Wallaceville, then bike through Mangaroa Valley to Te Marua, and down the Hutt River trail to Janus Bakkerij, and train back. Organiser Alastair Smith provided a map, which is here. 

That week I was not feeling well, and the forecast was for a cold, wet and windy day (summer seemed to have come to an end), so on the day before, I warned John that if the weather turned out horrible, I wouldn’t be going. It did, and I didn’t go. But John went.

Wellington Waterfront – Dragon boat races and other delights

It’s a while since I last wrote up any rides, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been biking. I’ve been a bit under the weather, but we’ve still managed to do some undemanding cycling.

After our exhausting ride to the Makara Wind Farm, described in my last blog, I vowed I would not go anywhere the next day (Sunday 6 March), but it was a fine, warm, breezy day, and there were things going on at the Wellington waterfront that would be fun to take pictures of, so we went for a short ride on the Giants (non-e bikes). This blog post is more about the activities we took photos of, than about the ride.

Ride to the Source – West Wind Windfarm at Makara

Last Saturday 5 March, we took part in an e-bike ride to the West Wind windfarm at Makara. We recently joined a Meetup group called the Wellington Chargers, the members of which all ride electric bikes. Organiser Alastair Smith (yes, he’s also organiser of the Folding Goldies – he gets around!) put it this way on the Meetup site: “Let’s check out where the power for our e-bikes comes from, with a ride to the West Wind windfarm at Makara”. Hence the title “Ride to the Source” (his words).

The West Wind Windfarm (photo by John)

Wairarapa ride – Martinborough to Gladstone

On Wednesday 2 March, having spent several days at my desk making changes to my blog, and not having biked for ten days, we thought we should do a substantial ride somewhere. And since there weren’t many rides listed in the Wairarapa Rides tab, we decided to remedy that by biking the route we had done when we took part in the Martinborough Charity Fun Ride, back in November. 

But instead of doing the 48 km loop without any stops in the middle, as there are no cafés along the way (how barbaric!), we decided to go as far as Gladstone so we could stop for lunch at the Gladstone Inn. This effectively meant we were doing the 67 km loop.

A few changes to the blog

As I am coming up to the third anniversary of this blog, I have been making some changes, and I hope, improvements.

It partly came about as a result of the fear of losing it all, if some internet or computer glitch should wipe some or all of it. A great deal of time and effort has gone into creating the blog, and while I hope that others “out there” are enjoying reading about our biking adventures, it is also a visual diary for ourselves.

I started by copy-and-pasting our major away trips into separate documents for myself. Then came the idea that some of our readers might like to see these trips as separate entities, to make them easier to find. We think – we hope – that other (retired? or maybe overseas?) cyclists might get ideas from our rides for their own explorations of our beautiful country. So I created a separate tab (across the top of the blog), where I have detailed our major trips, with links to the relevant posts.