Actually writing this the next morning while we wait for the rain to stop.
Clyde is a really cute old well preserved gold rush village. Ophir is similar but smaller – more of a hamlet.
Some shenanigans from the daughters back in Wellington distracted me in the morning so that I forgot to turn on my Strava, but I believe we did 39 kms over about 4 hours. We ladies have ebikes which make everything easier, although the blokes are going old school. The ebikes are annoyingly minuscule which is bizarrely common in rental ebikes. Why? It’s not like I’m an Amazon, and it’s quite unpleasant to be cramped up all day. In addition the assistance settings have such a wide difference in power that one is too little help, and two is far too much, so that you either struggle and sweat as if you’re not on an ebike, or you whizz along, hardly needing to pedal at all, which really feels like cheating. However, I’m not going to complain because somehow my bum doesn’t hurt which I’m tremendously grateful for. Wish I knew what the secret was!
The scenery was very pleasant rural central Otago, much of it looking straight out of an old Western cowboy movie. The steepest section of the entire trail was after lunch. The official name is Tiger Hill but the locals call it Chunder Hill. This may be because lunch is at a lovely old pub called Chatto station, and I must say I was a little concerned that the chaps may have overindulged with two pints of beer to wash down their enormous burgers. However, I needn’t have worried. Being an old railway, it was never going to get that steep. In fact, I could hardly tell it was a hill at all – possibly something to do with my ebike (set on two for the trip up). The highlight of the day was watching a fellow cyclist can off her bike after crossing a cattle grid at an awkward angle. By chance we were all standing around watching, as we were having a quick water stop. She was too embarrassed to want any assistance from us, although I did pick up her water bottle.
It ended up a really hot day, and I actually got sunburnt through my supposedly SPF 15 moisturizer. I’m going to have to top it up with some real sunblock once we get going today – once the rain stops.