Nelson to Murchison,Thursday 27 January.










1) Martin on the road to Murchison

2) Spooners Saddle



For the Cycletourist needing an early start many New Zealand motels have the very useful facility that you can order a cooked or continental breakfast delivered to your room often as early as 7.15. We made use of this in Nelson.

Another useful facility is the guidebook Pedallers Paradise in 2 parts for North and South Island. This gives guides to routes including graphs of the climbs involved which Peter found useful to know and details of facilities on the route including shops and cafes.

The guide for todays route told us that after an elevenses break we were unlikley to find any food or water before our destination. We stocked up at a nearby Supermarket which was a Woolworths food store.

We headed south on route 6 with a stop for elevenses at a nice cafe in the small town of Wakefield. Soon after we started on the first serious climb of the day to 464 metres Spooners Saddle (pass) where we had our picnic lunch. There were fine views looking back along the valley
bounded by mountains to Nelson.

Temperatures were warming up by now. We were later to learn that in the inland area we were headed temperature during the day reached 34C.

After a short descent from Spooners Saddle we started a long gradual climb with a steep section over the last mile to the 635 metres Hope Saddle.

The last 20 miles seemed to drag. Eventually we got to our motel at about 8.30 pm.

Ride distance was 79 miles with 3464ft of climb. Our average speed was 9.8 and riding time was 7 hrs 52 mins.