Day 19 - Western end of the Old Ghost Road - 9 km 212 m


 




Rather than ride the road through to Ikamatua and then the next day in to Greymouth we decided as we had a vehicle to go to the Seddonville end of the Old Ghost Road (OGR) and ride in from there. Unlike the Lyall end it does not have any major hill and the woman at the Coffee Cart at Granity said it's an easy wheelchair Granny track. That certainly buoyed up ur Aussies who are not big fans of gnarly Big River/Waiuta trails.

It certainly is the easy approach to the OGR although some may say it does involve a bit of hill climbing. I had mapped out a trail of up to 30 km's in length with a turn around point at a hut. Ian was able to follow us with the live track and we estimated that our ride back would take about 60% of the time going in.

Within a couple of k's we encountered a slip with a good trail through it and then there was a small climb over about 400 metres. After that we regrouped and headed off along the trail in the order of John, myself, Stephen and Peter. John and myself had got about 50 metres up the track when we heard Peter hollering, so we looked back only to see hm and no Stephen! Whoops.

In getting started, Stephen ended up taking the wrog line and over and down the bank her went well below the track! Fortunately the undergrowth slowed him down and offerred a less than hard landing and so, by the time John and I got back to the scene of the incident he was making his way back up from below the track while Peter was getting hold of his upturned bike. John leant a hand with the recovery operation and I felt there was nothing for me to do other than to record the recovery operation on my GoPro (you will have to wait for the full length feature film to see this, if it makes the cut).

Stephen assured us he was okay and as there was nothing red dripping out of him we decided to carry on. However shortly after we began STephen pulled up with a wobbly tyre and after an inspection it was decided to about turn and head back to where we had come from.

My Garmin InReach came in to its own at this point as I was able to send Ian a satelitte message to let him know we were on our way back to the pick up point ahead schedule. This was the first time I had used the device for this purpose and it was pleasing to see Ian and the vehicle there at the end of the trail waiting for us.

The bikes were loaded back on to the trailer, blokes in to the car and back to the coffee cart lady we went, this time to have a pie and a cup of tea for me.

We then headed off to Punakaiki to show our International friends the world famous (in NZ) pancake rocks and blow holes - it was low tidish and a relativeliy calm Tasman and so while the pancake rocks looked good the blow holes were not performing as they sometimes do.

Our earlier thoughts of taking in the part of the new track at Lake Brunner were canned in favour of a relaxed end of the afternoon at the Top Ten Holiday Park in Greymouth.

All up a very short ride followed by a nice touristy day and beginning of the wind down to our ride from AKL.

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