Parked at Allandale and had a wee explore round the waterfront all the way back round to the Gov's Bay wharf, which was disappointingly closed "due to earthquake". bah. looked fine to me. Been years since i'd been out there. Anyway, rode back round the waterfront, nicely warmed up thanks. Headed up through the new entry to the Farm Park, on up, progressively getting less new, and wetter and wetter. Not boding well.
Finally up and we saw that the usual paddock climb to the Pines was chock full of lambs and ewes, and cattle, and we wondered, is the place closed for lambing??? So, we made our way round to the Bamford Rd gate and found no signs, plus saw no sheep in between, so we figured, we'd just stay out of that one paddock, and slogged our way up 'mississippi', peeling off to the right across and up a big open area, then climbing a fence into the top half of the Pines. Up we rode through here, pollen wafting through our fields of view, up into Rhymes with Orange. Then decided to turn back and head down the Pines.
Great descent, flowy fun, all good for a long while down, then in the lower end Nelson ahead of me and he just smacked flat down on his left on the entry to a hairpin. I arrived and the look on his face made me think it was bad. He lay there for a while, taking stock, and thankfully received for his troubles nothing but a big haemotoma on the elbow and a couple of small leaks on his leg (one of which was a reopening from last week's Oldskool crash). On the ground you could see where his front tire side knobs had gone straight ahead. Front wheel right out from under him on the invisible lack of traction. We got going again and wended our way, both a little more warily, to the bottom where we found a few cattle that'd pushed a gate open and gotten themselves where they shouldna, so, herded them out and locked the gate and turned and headed back up the track.
Largely an awesome climb, but I struggled a bit in a couple of spots. Found the steeper stuff really hard. Anyway, after what seemed a while we stopped up on RhymesWith and rested and OneSquared and then i led the way round under the Outdoor centre and back into the Missississippippi manuka forest. A fair bit of sheepshit, but the sheep messed up the dirt a bit providing a little bit of traction. back and forth we meandered, out of the forest, round back into the forest, round back out of the forest, repeat.
Then a bit of a climb and up into Zanes. W00t! Excellent descent down here, traction mildly dodgy the whole way, keeping it exciting and interesting. Sketchy, but all in good enough nick. Out the bottom at Bamfords Rd gate we decided to pull the plug and headed down the road, back to the car.
Debated whether to stop and lap the nun, but Nelson was feeling a bit sore.
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