Day 8 Ohau to Omarama

8 am and we are on our bikes. This is seems to be about standard here, everyone else is getting ready to leave too.

It's another beautiful day and surprisingly, yesterday's wind is still with us. Since it came up in the afternoon of a warm day I expected it to die overnight. But no complaints! It will be behind us today and is very welcome.

The Tarnbrea track is rather rocky and uneven. Sau Keng gets me to take the trike over a small ford, most of it is better than this and Sau Keng gets better at handling too.

The track winds around the foothills then starts ascending. We were warned this was a big climb, but it's very gradual and no problem.

We cross a few steams, some with beech forest, mostly we were are in the open. Views are stunning.

Eventually we get to the high point, 900m, 400m above the lake. It sounds a lot, but we are only half way up the slope leading to the mountain proper! But I cannot see why the track climbs up here at all - from here it looks like we could have traversed at a lower level - maybe there are river gullies we cannot see.

The people with us are the knitting club ladies. Unfortunately for them one of the riders dropped her panniers on the way up so they have to backtrack and find it.

Wide open country on the downhill side. Grazed I think.

A 2 km sidetrack to a ' historic barn' seemed pointless to me . It's just wood frame with corrugated iron - falling to pieces. Nothing special. But I had not seen beech trees flowering before :-)

Now we are on the road. Slightly downhill with the strong breeze directly behind us. Effortless riding. A steeper downhill is ahead. I like the sign.

We are just 8 km from Omarama, but will detour 7 km to the clay cliffs. We've been told these are worth a look and this may be out only chance. It's worth the effort.

We turn off the sealed road to Omarama onto a gravel road, loose stone and badly corrugated. Not fun to ride :-( A car goes past. So much dust! The wind is to our right now and the dust blows over us. Another car, and another and another... Many are very considerate and slow right down. It reduces the dust a lot. I give them a salute. Others just keep going and I think evil thoughts. After a couple of kilometers we debate turning back, almost do, but carry on.

The cliffs are on private land. $5 per car. Two bikes? I put $5 in the honesty box. At least this road is smoother, it's still dusty though. (Our friends Mark and Sue came here in April while riding the A2O, parked their bikes and hitched the last few kilometers) We are impressed how many people are coming here, we had not heard of this place until we got near Omarama.

Eventually we turn a corner and see the cliffs. They do look good.

Another kilometer and we are at the end of the road. We have a somewhat undignified lunch sitting in the grass at the edge of the carpark then debate what SauKeng should do. The track entrance says "Walking only" I argue her trike is her mobility aid and no one will be offended. She lets me convince her and sets off. There are a few rough spots, but we make it right to the end, where Sau Keng walks a short way up the final section.

This place is well worth the visit and the river valley views are good too.

The ride out is better then coming in. Fewer cars pass us and the wind blows the dust away from us now.

Back on route to Omarama we see a sign "Coffee, ice cream" Disappointingly this is an unmanned shed, with just vending machines. SauKeng declines vending machine coffee, I'm not so fussy re ice cream :-)

Omarama. Smaller than we expected, with only one place to eat - the pub of course.

Statistics

Distance 61 km

Climbed 638 m

Time 4:52