Day 4: Murchison-Maruia
It's a short five hour day today! Practically a day off. I will explain.
Rain was forecast. Also, the next section has some awkward distances. Reefton is the next town but it's 9 hours away. A bit long, especially in the rain. So I was motivated to look for somewhere in the middle: and there’s a place five hours away, which breaks the trip up nicely.
Even though today was short, there was still 850m of climbing. For context, in Sweden I was riding 7-8 hours each day, and doing about 1000m of climbing. There is a lot of climbing around here: the Picton-Nelson section had 1800m which I think is a record for me. One which I'm not interested in surpassing.
Anyway. I spent a bit of time deciding whether to put my raincoat into a pannier, into the stuff pocket of the pannier, or the drinks bag. There had been a drizzle but it wasn't clear how bad the rain would be.
It's a moot point. Five minutes up the road and the rain is so steady it's raincoat time. I'm worried about the phone getting wet - my memory of the "Liquid has been detected in the Lightning connector" error which ended my run to Germany last month is very fresh…
So I stash the cellphone in my raincoat pocket with my bandanna; the pocket is zipped closed with just the headphone cord going in. The closed zip should mean no water gets in, the bandanna ought to soak up anything that does, so the phone should stay dry! (It didn't work.)
I'm on the backroads for the most part; it started on tarmac but soon switches to gravel. It's been recently graded and there's fresh gravel. Probably good news for cars but it's not a good surface for cycling. It's soft and there isn't much traction, easy to spill. There's a clear herringbone tyre tread from something heavy: that part has been compressed and is a bit more reliable so I carefully follow it.
The rain's been going for a while, and there's standing water in the treadmarks. The gravel road is wet. This means the bike is going to be covered in grit... I prefer dry days.
But this is the West Coast, and the advice is that two out of three days will have rain.
The cloud is low, there's mist everywhere, and there's rain. When looking out there's no sign of civilization. Rain and fog on the tree-covered hillsides is probably how it's looked for millions of years…
From left to right: this is what the day looks like. Surprisingly steep. Signs when entering the back road. Standard NZ views. Which could be from the Jurassic period. Check out the amount of grit on my shoes. Selfie looking down the valley, with too much fog.
I'm paranoid about the phone getting wet so taking a picture means drying my hands as much as possible, and getting the phone out of the pocket while bending forward so it's sheltered from the rain. Swipe to bring the camera up, but since the screen has a smear of droplets on it the touchscreen doesn't respond like normal and needs a few tries. Take a photo or three, quick check, back into the pocket with the screen on the bandanna and zip it closed to stop water getting in.
The bandanna is already damp, and I don't know how. How is water getting in there? Is it just water on my hands? Is it flowing down the headphone cable? It doesn't make sense. But to be safe I don't take many photos.
A sign says 7.5km to the saddle; means the climb is starting. Six river crossings - given the rain, I'm going to understand if there's more...
The route is steep but feels like it doesn't go over 10%, and the surface has switched from treacherous new gravel to mostly bare tyre tracks with a scattering of stones heaped in the centerline. So it's not too tough; stay in one lane, take care not to go wide. I'm in the lowest gear most of the time - I never use this in the Netherlands! Break for a sandwich halfway up. The rain hasn't stopped. I'm under a sheltering tree but so much rain is dripping through it makes a pool in the sandwiches plastic shell.
All of the river crossings are on this side of the peak. I approach them carefully, the riverbed is made of big stones, and it's easy to imagine getting stuck. Or worse, going over sideways - the phone on the handlebars might get dunked, and that would really ruin my week. Pick what looks like reliable path through them, slow down to a safe speed, unhook a foot in case things go bad, commit and go. The water is sometimes so deep my feet still get doused, but I get through them all without even having to put a foot down.
At the peak there's a huge imposing four-wheel vehicle coming the other way. In Amsterdam I'd stare him down, change up and expect him to turn first. Here in the backroads they'd never find my body, so I meekly pull well off the road and give him space.
The driver stops and asks if there's more riders in the group? None behind me, and I hope I'm right because that thing covers the whole road. It's so wide I expect it's a challenge to get it safely through over the pass on this narrow gravel backroad. It leaves no room to move for cyclists.
The downhill section isn't too steep, just take care to stay off the deep gravel.
From left to right: further up the valley. Even further, not a selfie. Reminded me of a Pink Floyd cover. Most of the saddle road looked like this. The bike, before cleaning. Milk comes in glass bottles, like it’s 1960 here!
The last part is on State Highway 65, and it's not great. There's a few sections where there's two inches of asphalt beyond the white line. Trucks pass regularly, and for safety I would pull off the road into the grass. The trucks were uniformly courteous and gave me a half-lane of space, I couldn't ask for anything more ... but I'm going to get clear out their way when they pass. I've recently heard of a truck crash where the driver's account sounds unreliable: my speculation is that he was texting.
So I finished the ride safely - but I had to pull grass bits out of my back derailleur when I cleaned it.
And the bike badly needs a clean. It's been sprayed in grit for about thirty kilometers. The rack bag got the most. The wheel-facing side of panniers is coated, and there's small stones on every other side, somehow. The bike's frame and gears and brakes are caked. The place I'm staying only has rainwater so I try to clean it using just a quarter bucket of water. There's probably going to be more rain and grit tomorrow so no point in making it spotless, but cleaning the moving parts is worth doing. There's a lot of corners which are hard to reach with a cloth, or even a short spray of water, and I do wonder how grit got in there at all...
And it’s the same with my clothes. The raincoat was so covered it needed to be washed before it could be brought inside. Everything I was wearing had grit and needed a wash. My phone still has small stones jammed into the gap where the protective case ends. My cards and money had been in a zipped raincoat pocket all day but I had to wipe them on a towel to get the grit off.
Done now! But I’ll probably need to do it all again tomorrow.
