It’s been a while since I posted the first 3 parts of my New Zealand vlog, but I finally got back to working on it! Part 4 includes our bike tour of the Gibbston Valley, heli-hiking Fox Glacier, and our 3 day kayak trip in Abel Tasman National Park.
Link here for Part 1 to start from the beginning.
That’s right, you read the title correctly, I went on a bike trip. For those of you who don’t know me it might not sound that surprising since I do a lot of adventurous things, but trust me, I am not a biker. So the fact that I went on an 8 day, 160km bike trip last summer (July 2019) was definitely a surprise to me and something that I never thought I would do.
Taking up bike touring was a little bit of a forced hobby, but I ended up enjoying it quite a lot. I’m a girl guide volunteer in my spare time and have been volunteering in a Pathfinder unit (girls ages 12-14) for the past 3 years. The girls in the unit had gone on a short bike trip the year before, so we decided to take things to the next level with an 8 day bike trip around Victoria and Sooke.
Like I said, I’ve never really been a biker. I do own a bike, but it’s not the most ergonomic bike and New West (where I was living at the time) is super hilly, so I hadn’t used it very much. To prepare for the trip, I did weekly spin classes (something I’d already been doing as knee strengthening for hiking) and I started doing weekly bike rides around my neighbourhood. I got pretty into it and then before I knew it, I’d convinced Carolyn to sign up with me for my very first triathlon! I completed the triathlon (750m swim, 10km bike ride, 5km run) about a month before the trip and felt so accomplished.
But that’s all besides the point. Let me tell you about the trip. Our group of 10 girls and 4 leaders met at the Tsawwassen ferry terminal on the Saturday morning of the Canada Day weekend. We walked our bikes onto the ferry and aside from our support vehicle for food and gear, our bikes were our only mode of transportation all week.
On day 1, we rode off the ferry and biked ~24km to Kingswood Camp, which is a girl guide camp next to Elk Lake, about halfway between Sidney and Victoria. It was a really nice day, but we had a lot to learn about group riding and it ended up taking us about 4 hours to get to the camp. The Lochside Trail runs from Sidney all the way to downtown Victoria, so we spent most of the morning on a nice bike trail through Sidney, before exiting the trail to bike to the camp.
We got a little lost on the way to camp, but we eventually made it. There are definitely challenges with group riding as you don’t want to ride too close together or too far apart, and you can’t all cross the street at the same time. So we had a few kinks to work out, but we took our time and had a pretty good ride.
Since this was a trip with 10 teenagers, we kept to a pretty leisurely itinerary and enjoyed the camp facilities on Day 2. Like I said, the camp is right next to Elk lake, so we went on a short ride to explore the surrounding area, doing a total of 11km of riding. On Day 3, we packed up and hit the road again.
Day 3 was Canada Day and we wanted to celebrate with the masses in Victoria, which involved a 13km bike ride into downtown. Unfortunately I had to miss this ride as it was my turn in the support vehicle, but I raced the girls to find parking in downtown Victoria and meet them at the hostel where we were going to spend the night. We had a full 16 person room booked out for ourselves, so we set up base there before going to explore Victoria for the day.
I have to confess that I rarely celebrate Canada Day in the city. We’ve had a long weekend the last 4 years for Canada Day and I have a tendency to skip out of the city for the weekend to hit the mountains, so it was a lot of fun to actually properly celebrate Canada Day. We walked to Parliament from our hostel and caught some of the celebrations. We had a nice dinner at the Spaghetti Factory and caught the fireworks over the harbour.
On Day 4 we left Victoria for our longest biking day. We biked out of the city on the Lochside Trail and picked up the Galloping Goose for the rest of the ride. The weather caught up with us though and it was a wet ride out of Victoria. We rode along the trails in the rain until around noon, when we made it to Langford and found a Tim Horton’s to rest and dry off. It was okay biking in the rain so long as we were moving, but as soon as you stop, it starts to get really cold. It quickly became evident that we were going to have to make some serious changes if we were going to make it to Sooke in one piece.
Fortunately we had a support vehicle and it caught up with us at the Tim Hortons. We had all the pathfinders change into dry clothes, but it was definitely a lesson in preparedness. Some were well prepared with good quick dry clothes and waterproof outerwear, but others had to do a complete change of clothes and shoes. I changed into all dry clothes, but I opted to wear the same shoes because I wanted to have a dry pair when we arrived. Instead, I changed my socks and did the old trick where you line your sneakers with a plastic bag to stop the wet shoes from seeping into your socks. It totally worked.
Fortunately, the rain finally stopped while we were in Tim Horton’s and stayed away for the rest of the ride. So we had a quick bite to eat at Tim’s and then took off again, this time being able to stay dry. The Galloping Goose from Langdale to Sooke was definitely the highlight of the trip for me. Until then, we were mostly riding on side road bike paths or in many cases, just bike lanes. But after Langford, the Goose changes to a wide forested trail for the rest of the ride. We were able to ride long distances without having to worry about any road crossings and the trail was wide enough that the girls could ride two abroad and chat.
It was 4 or 5pm by the time we rolled into Sooke and found the camp that would be our home for the next 3 nights, Milne Creek Camp. Kingswood was cool, but I loved Milne Creek. It’s this old timey lodge right on the river. It’s 100 years old and has these little hammock beds that you fold down from the wall. The old porch has been converted into a sun room where we would eat our meals and it had a great view looking out over the river. From the sun room we saw so much wildlife. I saw 3 bears, a bunch of kingfishers, and at least a dozen deer throughout the 3 nights.
The rest of the evening was pretty much devoted to drying out our clothes. In total we had biked 44km. Day 5 was a more relaxing day for me. Half of the group got up early to go kayaking, but I was in the second group, so we had a bit of a lie-in and then a lazy morning. In the afternoon we went out to Sooke for ice cream and spent some time playing games in the field before returning back to our humble abode for a campfire (indoors).
Day 6 was much more eventful as it was my turn to go kayaking. We hired a 3rd party to take us out kayaking for 3 hours in the Sooke Basin. The first group hadn’t made it too far out as it was too windy to cross the basin, but while it was still windy when we went, they deemed it had calmed down enough for us to cross the basin. I’m not sure I agree with that assessment as it was rough crossing the basin in open water, but we saw some sea stars and cucumbers along the shoreline and then kayaked around sacred first nations islands where we saw a bunch of seals sunbathing themselves.
In the afternoon, we visited the Sooke museum and farmers market. We tried some tasty treats at the market and then spent a fair bit of time at Sooke karaoke night at the market! The girls had been planning their own Karaoke night for the evening and were thrilled to discover a full fledged karaoke machine at the market, so we had fun watching them all sing the latest Jonas Brother’s songs. We finished with a trip to the community pool to take the opportunity to shower as our cozy accommodations were sadly lacking any way of bathing.
Day 7 was our last full day and the route was a bit of a repeat of Day 4. Fortunately though, the rain stayed away this time. The girls biked another 44km back to Kingswood Camp, but I was on support vehicle duty again. I did meet them several times throughout the day though. We met for a picnic lunch in Langdale, and then again for an ice cream break closer to Kingswood. We had a bit of a party on the last night. We had technical biking shirts for all the girls, so we dressed up and made some virgin margarita’s to celebrate all the distance we biked!
Day 8 was our last day and it was a bit of a flurry as we biked another 24km back to the ferry terminal. We stopped again for ice cream along the way and arrived at the terminal just in time to catch our ferry back to Vancouver. In all, the girls biked 160km over the course of the week. It was a totally new experience for me and something I don’t think I ever would have done on my own. I can’t see myself taking up biking as my main form of adventuring, but it certainly made for a great trip and experience!
Well done if you made it through my last post! Apparently I had a lot to say about the Milford Track, so I’ll try and be less wordy on this post.
After our 4 day adventure on the track, we decided it was time for some well earned lazy days in Queenstown. We decided to shell out for a nice hotel in Queenstown (though it was still cheaper than our bunkbeds on the track) with a hot tub, BBQ, and gorgeous city views. We checked in with our families to wish them a belated Merry Christmas and caught up on our laundry. We wondered into Queenstown for a few hours and did a little bit of shopping along the waterfront then stopped into Speight’s Ale House for a flight.
We’ve gotten pretty into craft beer since moving to Vancouver and love trying out flights of different beers. But this was a lot harder in New Zealand. Domestic beer is definitely more expensive, but craft beer is just crazy expensive, selling for $10+ a can in stores and $12 for 350ml in bars! So we were shocked when our little flight came out to $25 (they usually go for ~$7 in Vancouver), but I guess that’s just the price you have to pay in New Zealand. We did still take the opportunity to drink local as much as possible.
Wine on the other hand is comparable or cheaper to BC and there’s a lot of great wine in New Zealand. We decided to book a biking wine tour out of Queenstown and spent a full day biking to the different wineries in the Gibbston Valley. It’s a self guided tour that starts in the historic town of Arrowtown, which is this cute little “wild west” style town. We biked along the river out of Arrowtown until we reached the Gibbston Valley, where we biked to as many wineries as we could!
Before we hit any of the wineries though, we had to stop along the Kawarau River for a little Lord of the Rings viewpoint. The scenes where the Fellowship is boating along the river after leaving Lothlorien were filmed in the Gibbston Valley, not too far from where we were biking, so we popped up to one of the river viewpoints for a little look. While we were checking out the landscape, a bus pulled up to the edge of the road and a bunch of people jumped out on what turned out to be a “Lord of the Rings film locations” tour!
They all crowded in front of our view, so we stuck around to hear some of the tour guides interesting tidbits of information about the location. Apparently they had to shrink the fellowship in their boats to make the river look bigger and the location where we were standing was actually where the two kings of Argonath had been digitally added in (although replicas were still constructed for the filming – not to size obviously). We also learned that apparently Peter Jackson wanted to have orcs shooting at the fellowship while they were in the water and have Legolas shoot back, hopping from boat to boat. But just before filming, the entire river flooded and they lost all the filming equipment, so they abandoned the shoot. Peter Jackson got the opportunity to try again though when he shot The Hobbit, if anyone remembers the scene with the dwarves in the barrels!
The wineries are all gorgeous and it was fun to cycle between them trying out different wines. What I found really interesting is that there was really only 4 wines you could get at any of the wineries because of the soil and weather conditions in that region. Pinot Noir is the only red wine you can really find and is by far the most popular; the other three are Pinot Gris, Reisling, and Rose. I’m a white wine drinker, so I had no complaints! My favourite wine of the day was Peregrine Wines Rastaburn Riesling and my favourite winery overall was probably Mt. Rosa. Mt. Rosa is the last winery we did and is located at the top of a hill. The hill really didn’t look like much, but it was really hot out and we were pretty wine-weary at this point, so it felt like quite the strenuous bike ride to reach the top! We did also stop at Cargo Brewery for a flight, which is located in this old converted church. It has a really nice vibe and you can sit outside on the lawn, but I did feel like a heathen buying beer from a church on a Sunday…
After our few days in Queenstown though, it was back on the road! Our plan was to drive from Queenstown to Fox Glacier, but we didn’t have much planned for in between. Probably for the best because it was another gorgeous drive. We drove over the Crown Road to get to Wanaka and were constantly pulling over to snap photos of the view looking back towards Queenstown. I also had the delight of discovering that there is such a thing as yellow lupins!
We stopped for lunch in Wanaka and went for a little walk to see the famous Wanaka tree (#thatwanakatree). Seth didn’t really believe me when I told him we were going to see a famous tree, but he had to admit I was right when he saw the crowd of people snapping photos of it down along the beach front. I’m a little bit sad we didn’t have time to do the Roy’s Peak hike in Wanaka. For some reason I seem to have missed that hike in my research, but upon discovering it I was really aching to climb it, but sometimes you just can’t fit everything in and we decided to skip it.
The drive through the Lake District after Wanaka was probably one of my favourite stretches of road on the trip. You leave Wanaka and drive along Lake Hawea, before returning back to Lake Wanaka again. Both lakes are incredibly scenic and make for the most gorgeous viewpoints as you drive along between them. The mountains get bigger as you approach Mount Aspiring National Park and we decided to do a short walk to the Blue Pools.
I’m not sure “blue pools” is the best name for the hike, it’s really just a blue river, but admittedly very pretty. There was a lot of people enjoying the beautiful weather there, so I decided to go for a swim, but it was all glacier and snow melt (just like the Milford Track) and freezing cold. In retrospect, most of the rivers are freezing and the ocean seems to be the warmest place we swam!
The highway continued on to Fox Glacier where we were planning to ring in the new year and go on a heli hike. It ended up being quite the adventure, so more on that in my next post!
The Road Goes Ever On 