We’ve just got back from our holidays. We were away for almost two weeks in the South Island. Of this almost one week was spent cycling the Otago Central Rail Trail. A bit of history:
The Otago Central railway was built to supply the area around Cromwell (close to Queenstown), where gold had been discovered in 1861. By 1907, after 16 years of construction it had reached Clyde. When finished, the railway would have been around 250 km long and ran from Dunedin to Cromwell. Without the railway, it would have taken a few days by stage coach to run supplies that distance. The railway cut that trip down to less than one day. However by 1921 when it finally reached Cromwell, the gold rush was over. The railway continued to be used for supplying the farming industry in Central Otago, transporting wool back to Dunedin and so on. Of course eventually this work was done more efficiently using road transport and the railway became uneconomic. The tracks were torn up in the 1990s, and in 2000 the corridor was opened up as a cycling and walking trail. There’s more information at the rail trail’s official site
From Clyde to Middlemarch is a distance of 150Km and though you can do this on your own, carrying all your stuff, there are a number of tour companies that offer a 3 or 4 day trip. They provide you with bikes, book you in hotels or home stays along the way, carry your bags and provide you with refreshments along the way. We went with Pure Trails NZ. The trail is not too challenging (Pure Trails aims at the older part of the market, and most of their customers are in the 50-60 age group). A day’s cycling typically involves four stages with a coffee or lunch break between and one stage would be 10 or 15Km. Mostly the track is flat, though it does rise from 200 at the start to 800 metres at its highest. This means the first few days are going gradually uphill (remember that trains will not go up an incline of more than about 1 in 30). The last days are mostly downhill. Though, with a prevailing south easterly wind, downhill can be accompanied by a strong headwind.
The scenery in “central” is stunning. The background of the Taieri and the Rock and Pillar ranges as you cross the Maniototo plain is quite beautiful. We were cycling in early spring so the weather was still a bit chilly. In fact the distant peaks had a fresh coating of snow, which added to the beauty. The trail is mostly well away from roads, so the only sounds are your tyres crunching on the gravel and, if you stop to take a photos or just to take in the scenery, there’s just the song of the skylarks, finches and blackbirds and the sound of the occasional stream or river that you’ll cross. In future I would take a bird book; I had difficulties identifying some of the species we saw.
Pure trails offer a number of side trips and we took up all of these: curling, visit to a gold mine and so on (details all on their web-site). We also took the TranzAlpine train from Christchurch to Greymouth and back and, after our cycling trip, the Taieri Gorge railway from Middlemarch to Dunedin, which is the sole remaining section of the old railway. These two on their own are among the best rail journeys in the world.
I really recommend this trip. Pure Trails did a great job, the Otago scenery is beautiful, the exercise is not to strenuous and it’s the first time in about 15 years that I’ve been away from my computer for more than a few days.
