Long Cloud Ride Read online

  Josie Dew has cycled some 320,000 miles across six continents and 47 countries (some of them by accident). The survivor of several wonky knees and a handful of worn-out bottom brackets, she is still firmly fixed in the saddle. She has written six previous books about her travels: The Wind in My Wheels (shortlisted for the 1992 British Books Travel Writer of the Year Award), Travels in a Strange State: Cycling Across the USA, A Ride in the Neon Sun, The Sun in My Eyes, Slow Coast Home and Saddled at Sea (one of the Daily Mirror’s ‘summer season top travel reads’).

  For more information on Josie Dew, her books and her travels, visit www.josiedew.co.uk

  Praise for Josie Dew

  ‘Josie’s native resilience, not to mention her unquenchable optimism, prove indispensable and her entertaining chronicle of a singular adventure is both amusing and poignant’

  Good Book Guide

  ‘It is her well-developed sense of the ridiculous which makes her adventures so entertaining’

  Today

  ‘Dew excels at recreating and evoking the quaint and sometimes bizarre idiosyncratic behaviour and events she encounters’

  Adventure Travel

  ‘Josie is an acute observer of foreign lands … a highly engaging travel companion’

  Manchester Evening News

  Also by Josie Dew

  THE WIND IN MY WHEELS

  Travel Tales from the Saddle

  TRAVELS IN A STRANGE STATE

  Cycling Across the USA

  A RIDE IN THE NEON SUN

  A Gaijin in Japan

  THE SUN IN MY EYES

  Two-Wheeling East

  SLOW COAST HOME

  A 5,000-mile Cycle Journey Around the Shores of England and Wales

  SADDLED AT SEA

  A 15,000-mile Journey to New Zealand by Russian Freighter

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-0-748-12993-5

  Copyright © Josie Dew 2007

  Photographs copyright © Josie Dew 2007

  Maps and drawings copyright © Melanie Dew 2007

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  For Molly and Gary

  Contents

  Praise for Josie Dew

  Also by Josie Dew

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Maps

  1 Auckland, 24 December 2003

  2 Near Amodeo Bay, Coromandel Peninsula, 31 December

  3 Omokoroa, Bay of Plenty, 15 January

  4 Te Kaha, Eastland, 25 January

  5 Wairoa, Hawke’s Bay, 4 February

  6 Dannevirke, 12 February

  7 Picton, Marlborough, South Island, 20 February

  8 Kaikoura, Canterbury, 23 February

  9 Moana, Lake Brunner, West Coast, 3 March

  10 Lake Pearson, Selwyn, Canterbury, 6 March

  11 Wanaka, Otago, 1 April

  12 Timaru, South Canterbury, 20 April

  13 Blenheim, Marlborough, 6 May

  14 Wellington, North Island, 16 May

  15 Parakai, Auckland North, 15 June

  16 Rotorua, 7 August

  Appendix: Equipment Department

  Acknowledgements

  Very special thanks to:

  Mum and Dad, Gary Appleton, Melanie Dew, Beverley Bannister

  Barbara Daniel, Simon Sheffield, Viv Redman and Sheena-Margot Lavelle at Little, Brown

  Val Porter

  Hilary Foakes

  Mary and Barry Edwards

  Stuart Webb

  Jacquie Handley

  Roberts Cycles: Chas, Andrew, Brian

  The North Face: Éadaoin Hutchinson, Keith Byrne, Helen Samson, Tanya Bascombe

  Lyon Equipment Ltd: Frank Bennett

  Peglers: Dave Pegler

  Owen Cycles: Owen, Jon, Phil

  London Cycling Campaign: Rebecca Lack

  Sam and Brian at Xynergy

  1

  Auckland, 24 December 2003

  The minute I arrived it was time to leave – leave the ex-Russian ice-breaking cargo ship that over the past two months had transported me, not without incident, 15,000 miles across the boundless slosh of the Atlantic and Pacific to New Zealand, Land of the Long White Cloud. Only it didn’t look so white at that moment. More a universal greyness of unpromisingly dank proportions. Well, I ask you! What a welcome to Christmas Eve and the height of midsummer (they’re a bit mixed up with their festive dates and seasons, these Kiwis), with rain so heavy it would qualify for biblical matter. In fact, in light of the inclement weather it seemed prudent to stay where I was upon my ark rather than run the risk of drowning on land. Too bad if I had spent the last 55 days concerning myself with the very real prospect of sinking into the slop of the sea only to capsize in my tent on terra firma.

  Donning full wet-weather battledress I shouldered my bike to descend the slippery and unstable gangway that swayed at a jaunty angle down the monumental side of the ship’s hull. Once feet and wheels had introduced themselves to the forgotten sensation of stability proffered by the dockside, I flipped my bike up on to its double-legged stand and scuttled up and down the gangway several times in the hammering rain to retrieve a multiple of stuffed panniers from the poop deck. With all possessions accounted for, I formed them into a heap to the lee of a welldented HAMBURG SUD container and took stock. Here I was plonked in the middle of Auckland, a scarily large-looking city of sky-scraping monoliths butting up against Waitemata Harbour – rank upon rank standing to attention as they rose up before me into the ominous murk.

  It was early morning rush-hour and somehow I had to find my way among the swirl of scurrying streets. Navigating an escape route out of an alien city on two heavily laden wheels is daunting at the best of times but felt doubly so now, having just spent such a raft of days incarcerated at sea away from the bustling hustle of normal life.

  Before I could launch myself into the throes of the throng I would have to fight my way across the hazardous battleground of the port, its vast expanse a busy blurry mayhem of dock-cranes, thundering cargo-carrying trucks and dementedly bleeping and flashing forklifts and straddle-carriers darting all over the place while either clutching or seeking their prey of much voyaged shipping containers. As these containers looked certain to turn any ill-positioned cyclist into pulp at the slightest provocation, I felt no immediate urgency to make an agitated mercy dash for the exit gate. Not that I knew where the exit gate was, mind you.

  ‘It’s way over there, mate,’ said a matey chap who happened upon me from behind a cliff face of containers. ‘But don’t think about getting there under your own steam – it’s too easy to get crushed in a place like this! And port authority doesn’t allow it. Wait here and you’ll be right, mate. A van will turn up to take you and your gear to the gate.’

  Kevin Cooper was a project manager for Titan Marine Engineering Ltd and a self-confessed outdoor nut. ‘Like most of us Kiwis, I guess,’ he said, wiping the dripping rain from his fit, suntanned face. He had admitted to this alfresco addiction when espying my bike and mound of panniers and learning that I was planning on spending several months cycling around his homeland. ‘Awesome!’ he said. ‘You’ll have a fin-tis-tic time!’ And with that he handed me his card, telling me to ring if I needed any help.

  *

  Before long I was dumped at the port gate, where I set about hooking and strapping and bungeeing a bewildering heap of bags on to my bike. Although I was burdened
with exactly the same amount of luggage as I’d had when cycling to my ship rendezvous point all those blue moons and numerous seas ago, it had somehow expanded tenfold. I believe this is a phenomenon known in physicist circles as The Sod’s Law of Voluminous Mass of Weighty Density Gone Round the Bend Bonkers. Also known as BABE (Blinking Automated Bag Extension) for short. Either way, I found myself struggling to house my mountain of kit in anything resembling a conveyable fashion.

  Half a day later I had my bursting charges under some sort of control and wheeled my steed out on to Quay Street, where I prepared my unseasoned legs to mount up. Quay Street sounds like it should be a small, dainty and narrow cobbled byway lined with topsy-turvy olde worlde houses on one side where smugglers had once secreted their illicit contraband in intricate underground passages, and quaint brightly coloured tubby-girthed fishing vessels tethered to an ancient stone-walled harbour front on the other. Instead it’s a big fast thoroughfare officially termed Main Urban Route 6 which, if followed in either direction, will filter you on to the truck-stonking State Highway 1 – a low-numbered but high-ranking swathe of tarmac that stretches the length of North Island: 1,098 kilometres (682 miles) from Cape Reinga in the north to Wellington in the south.

  Luckily, tackling this stately highway on my wheels could wait. And a good thing too: wobbling around on my feet fresh off a lurching boat meant that I was in no fine shape to do battle with 50-tonne logging trucks. The wobbliness didn’t last for long though as I swiftly substituted my sea legs with my cycling legs, bypassing the more unstable land legs (cycling, it seems, is the perfect antidote for ocean-swaying unsteadiness). I then spun myself the short distance down Quay Street to the big ninety-one-year-old neoclassical Ferry Building that, among all the foresting tower blocks of silvery glass and steel, sat solidly squat on the city’s waterfront like a friendly fat red toad.

  *

  As I was in search of an address in a district called Bayswater I took off across the harbour (lovely view!) on board a passenger ferry to Devonport. Devonport is one of Auckland’s oldest suburbs, a good 160 years old, which for a relatively new land like New Zealand is saying something.

  It was still raining cats and kiwis as I wheeled my bike down the pier and along the waterfront. Everything was looking very Christmassy (glittery decorations wrapped around street lamps; piped carols emanating from shop doorways across the road, including an overload of Jingle Bells, or Jungle Bills as it seemed to mutate into in the Kiwi accent) though I couldn’t for the life of me think why. Oh, yes. It was Christmas tomorrow. How could I possibly forget? Quite easily actually. Spending weeks crossing the Pacific encompassed by a blinding blue in sweltering temperatures on board a Russian tub does not a festive gander make.

  Devonport looked decidedly affluent, beset with art galleries and craft shops and stylish cafes and costly looking boutiques all humming with the business of what I guessed to be a panicky last-minute Christmas shopping variety. I took off in a northerly direction up a main street lined on either side with quite fetching Victorian-type buildings. Quite colourful too. At the top of this road I was greeted by a rude shock in the form of a short sharp hill. Normally, my calf and thigh muscles rallying together in unison would not bat an eyelid at the prospect of carting me up and over such an insignificant blip of an incline. But present conditions were far from normal. My legs, used to a daily 50-mile pounding on my trusty-wheeled steed, had barely lifted a finger over the past two months at sea. Thus, a meal I made of a molehill. And quite aquiver I was too by the time I had summitted.

  Before long I was bowling along down a road past a fire station that warned of its presence with a triangular hazard sign containing a picture of a Trumpton-style toy town fire engine complete with roof-strapped ladder. Nearby, on the same side of the road, I spotted a Methodist church. Outside the front door reared a plastic sliding-letter notice board declaring: ‘ALL FRESH SERMONS – NO SUMMER RE-RUNS!’ So that was good to know. We don’t want any of those stale repeats, thanks.

  The road became festooned with weird-shaped trees with tortuous trunks ablaze with spiky red flowers. These flowers emitted the most heady scent of loveliness that I had smelt for a very long time. In fact, the trees’ richly fragrant bouquet lay in such stark contrast to the acrid diesel fumes I had become accustomed to on board my Russian tub that I yanked on my brakes so that I might linger a moment to take a deep breath or two about their boughs. And as I did so I heard birdsong. But this was no normal run-of-the-mill song from your normal run-of-the-mill bird. Saying that, it did look a bit like a blackbird. Only it had what appeared to be a distinctive white ruffled pompom attached to its throat, giving it the look of a prize poodle primped for a show. Its song was a liquid call, impossibly pure and fluting, interspersed with an unusual repertoire of clicks, grunts and chuckles.

  Following a few wrong turns down a maze of residential streets as wide as a ship and lined with fat concrete telegraph poles, I found the address I was looking for, minus the addressee. Jacquie, a friend of my dad’s (they had worked together back in the mid-eighties when I was a fledgling cyclist getting lost in far-off lands) was currently seeing to a spot of emergency car repair. ‘I won’t be long,’ she said when I rang her on her mobile. ‘Maybe half an hour at the most.’

  As a sudden full-blooded rain came on to join forces with the torrential wetness that was already falling from the leaden sky, I dived for shelter into the mouth of an open garage, part of a row of identical garages, and stood with bike, dripping and steaming, watching the raindrops bounce like mini bombs off the tarmac outside. The garage looked out over a driveway and into the kitchen of the one-storey wooden house opposite. In the kitchen I saw an elderly couple looking out of their window looking at me. They both bore an expression of perplexity as to just what the devil I was doing – a stranger on the block, standing astride a mount loaded to the gunwales in a garage that had nothing to do with me. For all I knew it could have been their garage. Though I rather hoped it wasn’t. I didn’t really fancy rubbing any Kiwis up the wrong way on my first day. There would be plenty of time yet for that. So to put their minds at rest that I wasn’t a terrorist disguised in Gore-tex, I pointed to the sky (indicating rain) and gave them a sort of ‘bloody weather!’ shrug-of-shoulder smile and a cheery wave – a gesture of comradeship that only succeeded in making them appear even more worried. Oh well, I thought, there’s no pleasing some people. So I decided to read the paper instead.

  On the way over here I had picked up a copy of the New Zealand Herald (Auckland edition). Casting an eye across the headlines on the front page I was a little surprised to read: ‘22 HOURS UP A TREE WHILE KILLER CROCODILE LURKS BELOW’. Flipping heck! There I was, thinking I was coming to a nice safe land famed for its profusion of innocuous sheep and devoid of any form of poisoning or stinging or limb-gnawing Aussie-style nature that can kill you in seconds, when what should I discover but a possible posse of immigrant crocodiles on my doorstep. But it always pays to read beneath the surface of the headline and that was when I discovered that the killer croc’s place of residence was Australia. Two teenagers and a twenty-two-year-old man had been washing mud off their quad bike in the swollen Finniss River 80 km south-west of Darwin when the man, Brett Mann, was swept away. His friends swam out to rescue him, but were beaten there by a four-metre saltwater crocodile. ‘I went past the croc, I didn’t see it, Ashley [did and] screamed out, “Croc, croc”. We just swam to the nearest tree and straight up we went,’ said one of the teenagers. A couple of minutes later the crocodile ‘showed off’ the dead body of Mr Mann in its jaws, before stalking the teenagers all Sunday night and Monday morning.

  Fortunately New Zealand is a little tamer in this department. Another headline on the front page of the Herald concerned a sample of the 6,000 emails sent to the North Pole this year from what I presume, and hope, to be the younger residents of New Zealand. The paper said:

  Here are extracts from Santa’s favourites:

  ‘We will
leave you a glass of milk and cookies because we know you will be very busy on Christmas Eve night and most of the takeaway shops will be closed.’

  ‘I wish for peace on Earth and goodwill to all men and to win the Powerball jackpot.’

  ‘We have some wrapping paper over and we thought you could use it. Please can you send an elf to fetch it tonight.’

  ‘My dad won’t put a possum trap in the fire because last Christmas he did.’

  When Jacquie turned up we climbed up the outside steps to her top-floor flat. Despite being only two storeys high this flat felt like being in an air traffic control tower. Because we were in the tallest building in the vicinity (most surrounding houses were squat one-storeys) we had a wide sweeping view encompassing a nip-and-tuck of Shoal Bay, a busy tract of State Highway 1 laden with traffic filtering on to and off the Harbour Bridge and the house-crammed suburbs of Northcote, Hillcrest, Birkenhead and beyond. The relatively high towers of Takapuna were also visible, as was the magnificently distinctive low conical shape of Rangitoto, the volcanic island that floated on the skyline at the upper end of Tamaki Strait. By now most of the rain had cleared, leaving a stretched sky of scrubbed pale blue across which scudded weird-shaped dollops of fast-moving clouds. The clarity of the light was astonishing. Vibrant and undiffused, it gave everything a sharp and emphatic hyper-realist presence. In the areas where it simultaneously rained and shone, the sky reflected prisms of dazzling rainbows.