Wednesday Evening Lungs Sprung around up and back

Usual pick up, traffic navigations, up Hackthorn, Dyers and over the hill - parking at the Governor's Bay jetty. Rode round the waterfront trail, quite enjoying high tide and pleasant odours, -ish. Thru Allandale, spotting kingfishers galore, and then some kereru swooping around as we headed up the road and into the bottom of Living Springs. Climbed in the valley, cross the stream a couple times and around onto the nice new Totara Valley climb into the Pines then on up up up - noticing a lot of onga-onga around the place, looking lush and vigorous.  Clamber clamber, through Rhymes with Orange and then up the grass and through a couple of gates.

Above the Outdoor Centre, climbing through the gums, through a dodgy gate, then into the forest, sidling and climbing, up more, in the bush on the awesome twisty turny climbing trail.  Stopped to pull some weeds (foxgloves), and then I brushed my arm through some onga-onga and no dock was to be found.  Yowch a bit.  Thru the difficult fence and then a bit more bush before coming out onto the open lands.  Across to the cabbage tree, and back up the other direction, getting steeperer and steeperer til I walked a bit.  Re-mounted and rode on for a while, through the gate and the trail was nice and cleared, having been weedsprayed at some stage recently.  On a particularly steep grunt I completely exploded my drive train. Got to work fixing, and half an hour it took, using rocks and breaking Nelson's mini pliers in the process, we managed to remove a couple of bent-arse links, cobble together the chain with a couple of 9spd quicklinks, and bash my granny ring out of the way sufficiently for me to continue upwards using the 36t (2nd gear).

Nelson rode most of it, but I walked a bunch of the steepest bits, and eventually we made the top, walking over the fence and up the hill a bit; observing dickhead boyracers taking blind corners on the wrong side of the road at speed.

The view from the top:

brief snackage, and then it was time to head down. Fun blast. So so good. Back down into the bush and it was exhausting, twisting and turning, avoiding bar-strike, sketchy, slightly greasy bush soils, but just so good. Puffing a lot by the time we got to the dodgy gate.  Then down past the Outdoor Ed Centre, gates, and into Mississippi, me nearly getting taken out by a couple of big lambs, but catching up Nelson, and swooping down and through the kanuka forest.  Then around to Zane's, the climb not so bad, and then down, what a blast.  An off camber root and my own muppetry made me stop briefly (without crashing) about half way down, and Nelson got a good lead on me which I never gained back.  Finishing off with an awesome floaty jump at the bottom.  

And nearly done, back around into the new Totara Gully for a super fun downhill and then around the hill and down again, funtimes, finally cruising down between the fences to the road again.  Thru the Freedom Campers at Allandale and we blazed back around the waterfront to the car.  All good.

16kms travelled, 638m climbed and descended