Writing this blog I decided I would go on to Youtube and a find a few tour adventurers who have done LEJOG or the are tour personalities
This how I learnt about much of the details of about what to expect when doing the TA when I first decided I would do that.
Steven Petty was one author /film editor and cyclist who had put his adventures in film and he was a significant influence and help to me from those videos.
I had a few come up in my search and two of them were people I have meet.
First up Steven Petty:
I meet Stephen in 2022 as he stayed at my house with another friend of his, Martin Grethe. Both experienced riders. Have look at their adventurers you tubes of tour riding, click on the arrow in the middle of the picture.
I recommend you search YouTube under his name. Steven Petty. His videos were inspirational and really helpful and I really think you would enjoy his youTube postings on tours and tips on gear.
I got to know Steve in 2022 as he was in Gisborne doing the Kopiko.
He and great friend Martin Grethe finished in that Pandemic affect Tour which ended just up the road from our place and they stayed at our place for the night.
In 2023 they did the famous and very difficult Tour Divide from Banff in Canada to the Mexican Border and its great story on YouTube. They had horrendous conditions especially in the northern regions. Below is a YouTube of day one. Again he has numerous other postings
2nd up tour postings by Edna-
Another Posting my search for Lejog tours that came up was by "Edna".
Now this was getting weird, Edna our group meet on the S2S in 2023. Only in NZ eh 😀
Our small group meet Edna in the commercial hotel on the Otago rail trail. Her story is an interesting one.
She has only recently got into tour cycling and was well and truly been bitten by the bug.
It was what she just wanted to do and not stop.
When we meet her in March 2023 she had just finished one tour, I think she had just done the TA , and was early on in her way north again by doing the S2S so the reverse way from the bottom to the top of the sth Island.
Obviously she has been badly bitten as her posting I found was on LEJOG. She had blogs for most days of LEJOG and boy I cold feel the cold that she experienced. Not for me
We meet her at a hotel, as we arrived in and immediately ordered food and started to devour our meal and watch a rugby game at the commercial hotel in Omaha.
Click on the YouTube video below for Edna's final day on LEJOG, late winter 2024
The YouTube video below is of Edna's last day in a late winter ride in 2024(this year !). I do hope we have better weather than she experienced, as it looked really cold. I don't like extreme cold, cause I have "a broken thermostat " I think 🤔.
Early summer surely will finer and warmer, especially in Scotland.Other videos exist of her earlier days.
This is some of my group settling into dinner at the commercial hotel and watching super Rugby match
This day came back to me for several reasons=
1/ The all conquering Crusaders lost in Fiji , to the Fijian Drum in an upset result 😀. Sports crazy people can use events to date their lives 😀. Oh is that me. ?
2/Don't get lost and the wonders of using and collecting Data- in retrospective that day was a day of riding contrasts-Hard hills, loads of river crossings, Long hot roads, easy rail trails with smooth surfaces set up for recreational cycling and tourism.
That lead me to whole lot of reminiscences of that day in March 2024 where we ended up at the rail trail for the final part of day.
I decided to give you a glimpse of a day from a navigation, data collection and experiences point of view.
Going back into my previous rides is easy to do when you bike trek, as today, bike computers gather so much data and information as you travel. When you come into civilisation and wifi range the bike computers download this collected data to large central servers .
The software I use case, is called Garmin Connect as I have Garmin Bike computer.
That daily electronic log (activities) can be searched by a range of factors like: type of activity i.e swimming, running and cycling or perhaps by dates.
The bike computers gather a load of data, including date and time, GPX location positions every few seconds , altitude, temperature, heart rate, etc., and download this data to the servers when we end the ride. This is then available to view on maps of all types and analyse the information collected.
Here's an example.
Firstly the Garmin Connect elevation map below is of that days ride, which is what brought back the first memories and made me smile. See a little blip of a steep hill in the elevation map, before another long slow steep climb and I immediately remembered that morning !. The reason was I got a little off course and lost and how I found out I was lost !.
We started at 6 :46 am that day (from electronic records), and it was coolish, I just remember that. As we moved further south in March morning temperatures were steadily falling..
Below is an extract from the official guide book that the tour organisers put together. 2023 was the second year of this tour, so they did well to test the ride in 2022 with a select group of invited riders and write this fantastic guidebook in time for the 2023 tour. Thank you Jonathon Kennett and Erik Westra authors of the guidebook.
This pages' graphic covers part of a 79 km stage of the 107 km we covered that day. The course for this part of the tour from Omarama where we started to Oturehua had two pages of notes , giving kilometre reading from the start of that day and turn points at that Km mark.
Tour Guide book of route notes for that day
That first little steep hill in the elevation map below, is a story in itself and was where I got lost.
Yes we do get lost occasionally and where by a freak coincidence, Lee -Anne was the one that found that I was going the wrong way and needed to turn around.
I was leading our group at the time and moved maybe 600 or so m in front of my riding buddies.
We follow our course from the official course guide book and also from GPS tracking on our bike computers, where we watch a marker follow a trail on a small computer screen map about the size of a small box of matches , so the details can at times be difficult to see and interrupt at times, or you simply are not paying enough attention.
I knew a hill was coming up from the S2S tour guidebook and was expecting it.
Lee -Anne-anne and I touched base briefly about 4 or 5 km before we hit the hills.
She happened to be was dot watching in bed at home and could see me and my friends and that people in front of us were seriously off course.
She decided to ring me to say good morning and we chatted and she mentioned mentioned someone in front of us was off course on her Mapprogress software.
Our mobile call fell off as we had dicy phone coverage in remote areas.
We started approaching the hills and our course notes talked about a car park coming up, which I thought I found and turned A LITTLE right and immediately started heading up this really steep track,.
STEEP Like way over a 15 % grade and very rough SURFACE.
I Ended up pushing my bike and sharing stories about farming in Hawkes bay with a fellow rider who had caught up with me, as we pushed up this really steep hill.
I looked behind after about 20 minutes of slogging it pushing our bikes up this rough trail and couldn't see my other mates behind us.
My GPS indicated I was a little off course, but it was difficult to work out. I went to phone to look at a topographical map and that confirmed it we were lost and off course. Luckily and very fortunately my phone then got 1 bar of coverage and binged , we just got phone coverage due to our elevation . I noticed I had a many messages from Lee -Anne saying I was off course.
I rang and Lee -Anne and she could see my mates on the course from the Mapprogress software and now they were in front of us.
We realised we had made a mistake, so turned our bikes around and literally flew down this hill bouncing from rock to rock in about 3 minutes, which probably took us 20 minutes to climb, and found the turning that we had missed.
What followed was a bit of hard farm track speed riding and we finally caught our mates just before the official very steep hill which on the guide map. The track takes you over the Omarama saddle at 1250m elevation and a is a good climb but you can bike a lot of it, as not steep as the previous one when we were off course.
I have been lost a few times over the last few years. Three times in Auckland in one day believe it or not, which was one of the most frustrating cycling days of all time during the early days of the 2022 TA. A day when I really suffered and needed a little lie down mid afternoon to regather myself and my mental state. You learn from those things, well you learn perhaps how to better handle these things, as always it's a challenge on your mental state. All part of the problem solving that is tour riding.
Once over the Omarama saddle we proceeded to go steeply downhill sand follow a river which we forded approx 30 times as it wound its way through this high country valley.
One of the River crossings-This is dry high hill country and the rivers were cold. I week latter they had loads of snow here.
We ended up at the Oturehua Village at this store, just before it was closing at about 3 or 4 pm. The owner saw us arrive outside his store and but keep open to serve us before they and friends climbed into a van were off to a concert in Christchurch.
The store is NZ oldest and longest -running store. It was like walking into a museum. it was huge and was awesome. For those who remember it was bigger than the old $ square store that is approx where the Unity Theatre and the preschool is in Ormond road before the Bp but on the Northern side of the road. Loads of wooden walls.
Below is a photo and probably 1/5 of it. A general store totally for rural folks.
.Here are some of my own YouTube videos of my touring. From TA 2022
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