Day 7 Twizel to Ohau Lodge

Sunday. We are not in a hurry to start and it is 10 before we are on the road.

The day is fine and calm. Perfect. Arno says everything on the track is open and something about wind near Ohau.

We ride back to Twizel town center to buy milk for tomorrow's breakfast and for a quick look around. There are two 4 Square's here! Big town.

Artwork in Twizel town centre: Rare black stilts

Finally we are on the A2O trail, heading toward Ohau. Effortless riding, beautiful environment, it does not get much better. ('A2O' - Alps to Ocean)

The route takes us to the Pukaki canal, which takes the outflow from the lake to the Ohau A power station at the back of lake Ruataniwha. The water is an amazing blue, and calm enough to make good reflections. Lovely.

We reach the Ohau canal and turn to follow it up to lake Ohau. A group of 'old' ladies on e-bikes pass us while we are stopped to take photographs. They are also riding the A2O trail. ('old' - probably around our age)

There are lupins along this side of the canal, very pretty, we wonder if lupins will still be in bloom when Shervonne and Lavonne join us.

These lupins won't be blooming, for a kilometer or more they have been sprayed and are dying. We know they are considered invasive, but this is the first time we have seen action taken against them. However it's only 1-2 kilometers, and only on the side of the canal, and even there they missed a few. It seems futile.

I've got ahead of Sau Keng and come to a young man and woman by the canal, so stop and chat while I wait. I'd been admiring the range of hills to our right and wondering how hard it would be to walk to the top. They have just run over them. Things like this keep us humble. Sau Keng arrives and we talk more. They work for the A2O team so I pass on our suggestions re the trail advisory notices. She asks us to fill in the survey - "we have a target of 500 for the year and have only got 400 so far"

We are at lake Ohau already :-). Half way. But that was riding on sealed roads. Now we have a narly track and are going much more slowly. The riding is more interesting riding though.

We reach a nice lunch spot for lunch and take a break. While we are eating the group of ladies, who we passed a while back eating their lunches, ride past us again. So peaceful and beautiful here.

Well done bike. You deserve a photo!

We come to the weir, last week water was flowing over it and the path was closed. They are still letting water down the river, which surprises me, it will miss the Ohau A power station. At Tekapo and Pukaki everything went into the canals.

This toilet amused me. How windy does it get here to make it necessary to chain the structure down?

When we were around here in autumn two years ago the wild roses had masses of bright red rosehips (I never got a photo that showed the intense red properly) These roses I have seen this trip with flowers on them.

Past the weir the track is a 4 wheel drive route. At first this is very awkward as the wheel ruts are deep but take only one of the trike's wheels. Ahead I see one of the awkward cycle gates and swear to myself - "This too##!" But it's actually good, very good. This gate has enough clearance for the trike to cleanly ride through, and on the other side is a smooth bike trail. Riding is enjoyable again for Sau Keng :-)

We pass a few riders and walkers going the other way, this is easily the most cyclists we have met on a track.

We are riding around the lake, when we get to the bottom of the lake, there is a decent breeze now and small whitecaps on the water. As we continue around we will be riding into this :-(

The trail takes us to the Ohau road. 8km to go. We are riding Into a strong headwind - just as Arno predicted. It's a bit of a slog, but not too bad. 8 km is not far when we know it is the end.

Ohau ski field road. What would it be like to ride up that?

Ohau lodge. We are happy to be here after the ride into the wind - and very happy with our decision not to ride all the way to Omarama in one day. The lodge feels old, but with recent extensions. The lounge looks very comfortable and our room is okay, we will be comfortable here. The shower is actually more of a mist - shame - a decent show after a day riding is a pleasure, this barely wets me and if the day was cold would not keep me warm.

Most of the people here seem to be A2O cyclists and most are on e-bikes with luggage ferried for them. But we are not the toughest here, two manual bikes are parked by a small tent. Those guys are tough!

We move to the lounge to work (there is wifi there, but not in our room) The ladies who passed us have formed a group, men are in another around the fire (we are exceptions) When we walk past the ladies to look at the view from the balcony we see they are all knitting, later we learn they are all from a knitting club in Wanaka.

For dinner we are all assigned tables of 6 people. The tent dwellers are at our table, they are an 'older' couple from Holland cycling their way around New Zealand. They have also cycled across Europe several times. Very impressive. Grouping people like this is really good. Left to ourselves we would not have mixed and talked nearly as much.

Statistics

Distance 44 km

Climbed 149 m

Time 3:20